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BEFORE AND AFTER THE TREATY OF 

WASHINGTON: THE AMERICAN 

CIVIL WAR AND THE WAR 

IN THE TRANSVAAL 



An Address 

DELIVKKED BKFOKE THE 

New York Historical Society 

ON rrs 

NINE TY-SE VENTH ANNIl 'ERSAR \ ', 

TuES[)AV, November 19, 1901, 



CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, LL.D. 

President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 




NEW YORK: 

PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY 

1902. 



r 






Officers of the Society, 1901. 



PRESIDENT, 

THE VERY rev. EUGENE A. HOFFMAN 

D. n. (OXON.), LL.D. , D.C.L. 
FIRST VICE-PRESIDENT, 

J. PIERPONT MORGAN. 

SECOND VICE-PRESIDENT, 

JOHN S. KENNEDY. 

FOREIGN CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

NICHOLAS FISH. 

DOMESTIC CORRESPONDING SECRETARY, 

FREDERIC WENDELL JACKSON. 

RECORDING SECRETARY, 

SYDNEY H. CARNEY, Jr., M.D. 

TREASURER, 

CHARLES A. SHERMAN. 

LIBRARIAN, 

ROBERT H . K E L B Y . 



EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 



FIRST CLASS — FOR ONE YEAR, ENDING I902. 

F. ROBERT SCHELL, DANIEL PARISH, Jr., 

FREDERIC WENDELL JACKSON. 

SECOND CLASS FOR TWO YEARS, ENDING T903. 

NICHOLAS FISH, ISAAC J. GREENWOOD, 

CHARLES FREDERICK HOFFMAN, Jr. 

THIRD CLASS — FOR THREE YEARS, ENDING 1904. 

JOHN S. KExNNEDY, GEORGE W. VANDERBILT, 

CHARLES ISHAM. 

FOURTH CLASS — FOR FOUR YEARS, ENDING 1905. 

J. PIERPONT MORGAN, JOHN ]. .TUCKER. 

JOHN J. TUCKER, Chairman, 
DANIEL PARISH, Jr., Secretary. 

[The President, Recording Secretary, Treasurer, and Librarian 
are members, ex-officio, of the Executive Committee.] 



At a meeting of the New York Historical Society, 
held in its Hall on Tuesday evening, November 19th, 
1901, to celebrate the Ninety-seventh x^nniversary of the 
founding of the Society, Charles Francis Adams, LL.D., 
President of the Massachusetts Historical Society, de- 
livered the address, entitled : " Before and After the Treaty 
of Washington: The American Civil War and the War in 
the Transvaal." 

Upon its conclusion Mr. A. V. W. Van Vechten sub- 
mitted, with remarks, the following resolution : 

Resolved, That the thanks of the Society be presented 
to Mr. Adams for his instructive and interesting address 
before the Society this evening, and that a copy be re- 
quested for publication. 

The resolution was seconded by Mr. William P. Prentice. 

The resolution was then adopted unanimously. 
Extract from the minutes, 

Sydney H. Carney, Jr., 

Recording Secretary. 



BEFORE AND AFTER THE TREATY 
OF WASHINGTON: THE AMERICAN 
CIVIL WAR AND THE WAR IN THE 
TRANSVAAL. 



Negotiated during- the spring- of 187 1, and 
signed on the 8th of May of that year, the Treaty of 
Washington not only put to rest questions of differ- 
ence of lonof standino- bier with dancrer, between 
the two leading maritime nations of the world, but 
it incorporated new principles of the first importance 
into the body of established International Law. 
The degree, moreover, to which that treaty has in- 
fluenced, and is now influencing, the course of hu- 
man affairs and historical evolution in both hemi- 
spheres is, I think, little appreciated. To that 
subject I propose this evening to address myself. 

The time to make use of unpublished material 
bearing on this period — material not found in news- 
papers, public archives or memoirs which have 
already seen the light — has, moreover, come. So 
far as any considerable political or diplomatic result 
can be said to be the work of one man, the Treaty 
of Washington was the work of Hamilton Fish. 
Mr. Fish died in September, 1893 — now over eight 
years ago. When the treaty was negotiated Gen- 
eral Grant was President ; and General Grant has 
been dead more than sixteen years. In speaking 



8 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiingtou : 

of this treaty, and describing the comphcations 
which led up to it and to which it incidentally 
gave rise, frequent reference must be made to 
Charles Sumner and John Lothrop Motley ; and, 
while Mr, Sumner died nearly twenty-eight years 
ago, Mr. Motley followed him by a little more 
than three years only. Thus between the iith of 
March, 1874, and the 7th of September, 1893, "^ 
those I have named — prominent actors in the 
drama I am to describe — passed from the stage. 
Thev beloncred to a oeneration that is eone. Other 
public characters have since come forward ; new 
issues have presented themselves. The once fa- 
mous Alabama claims are now "ancient history," 
and the average man of to-day hardly knows what 
is referred to when allusion is made to " Conse- 
quential Damages " or " National Injuries " in con- 
nection therewith ; indeed, why should he, for 
when, in May, 1872, that issue was finally put to 
rest, he who is now (1901) President of the United 
States was a boy in his fourteenth year. None the 
less, as the Treaty of Washington was a very mem- 
orable historical event, so President Grant, Secre- 
tary Fish, Senator Sumner and Minister Motley 
are great historic figures. Their achievements and 
dissensions have already been much discussed, and 
will be more discussed hereafter ; and to that dis- 
cussion I propose now to contribute something. 
My theme ^includes the closing scene of a great 
drama ; a scene in the development of which the 
striking play of individual character will long retain 
an interest. 

History aside, moreover, the Treaty of Washing- 
ton itself is a living, and it may even be said a con- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal . 9 

trolling factor in the international situation of to- 
day : 

" And enterprises of great pith and moment 
With this regard their currents turn awry, 
And lose the name of action." 

That treaty was signed on the 8th of May, 1871 ; 
the battle of Majuba Hill took place nine years from 
the following 27th of February. The two events 
occurred on different sides of the equator and of the 
Atlantic ocean ; they apparently had as little bear- 
ing on each other as it was possible for two inci- 
dents to have ; and yet the logical outcome of the 
latter event was included and forestalled in the set- 
tlement effected through the earlier. 



I 

Between 1861 and 1865 the United States was 
eneaeed in a strues^le which called for the exertion 
of all the force at its command ; as, to a lesser ex- 
tent, Great Britain is now. The similarity between 
the war in South Africa and the Confederate War 
in this country early attracted the attention of 
English writers, and one of the most thoughtful of 
their civil and military critics has put on record a 
detailed comparison of the two.* "Each of these 
conflicts," this authority asserts, " had its origin in 
conditions of lono- and gradual cfrowth, rendering- 
an ultimate explosion inevitable. Each of them 
deeply affected the whole existence of the com- 
munities which found themselves in antagonism. 
In each case, therefore, the energy and the duration 
of the fighting far exceeded the expectations of 

* Spenser Wilkinson, War and Policy (1891), pp. 419-36. 



10 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

most of those who might have seemed to be in a 
position to judge." To the same effect, another 
author* refers to the "striking resemblance" be- 
tween the two struggles. " The analogy," he says, 
"like any other historical analogy, must not be 
pressed too far, but there is a remarkable parallel- 
ism in the general character of the political issues, in 
the course of negotiations preceding war, and in the 
actual conduct of the campaigns, a parallelism which 
sometimes comes out in the most insignificant de- 
tails." This analogy the writer might advanta- 
geously have carried into his discussion of the effect 
of both wars on foreign opinion at the time of each. 
He correctly enough admits that, during the strug- 
gle in South Africa—" The whole of Europe almost 
was against us, not so much from any consideration 
of the merits of the case, as from the dislike and jeal- 
ousy of England which have developed so enor- 
mously in the last decade " ; but he significantly adds 
— " In the United States sympathies were much di- 
vided." In fact, during our Civil War the entire 
sympathies and hearty good-will of the great body of 
those composing what are known as the governing 
and influential classes throughout Europe west of 
the Vistula, were enlisted on the side of the Con- 
federacy. In these classes would be included all 
those of rank, members of the learned professions, 
the commercial, financial and banking circles, and 
officers of the two services, the Army and the Navy. 
And, then also as in the case of the South African 
war, this instructive accord arpse, not " from any 
consideration of the merits of the case," but from 
"dislike and jealousy"; — the dislike and jealousy 

* The Times's History of tJie War in South Africa. 



Auierican Civil War and War in the Transvaal, ii 

of American democracy, which "had developed so 
enormously in the course " of the decade or two im- 
mediately preceding the outbreak of 1861. Espe- 
cially was this true of England ; there "sympathies 
were much divided," but the line of cleavage was 
horizontal, not perpendicular. The poor, the lowly 
and the conscientious instinctively sympathized with 
the Union and the North; while of the privileged 
and the moneyed, the commercial and manufactur- 
ing classes, it may safely be asserted that nine out 
of ten were heart and soul on the side of the rebel 
and slaveholder. It is only necessary for me fur- 
ther to premise that as respects foreign govern- 
ments, and the principles of international law and 
'amity relating to the concession of belligerent rights, 
— the recognition of nationality, neutrality, and par- 
ticipation of neutrals, direct and indirect, in the oper- 
ations of war, — the position of the Confederacy and 
of the two South African republics were in essen- 
tials the same. The latter, it is true, were not mari- 
time countries, so that no questions of blockade, 
and comparatively few of contraband, arose ; but, 
on the other hand, while the Confederates were, as 
respects foreign nations, insurgents pure and sim- 
ple, the South African republics had governments 
de jure as well as dc facto. Great Britain claimed 
over them a species of suzerainty only, undefined 
at best, and plainly questionable by any power dis- 
inclined to recognize it. This the British authori- 
ties * deplore, and try to explain away ; but the 
fact is not denied. 

So far, therefore, as the status of those in arms 
against a government claiming sovereignty is of 

* The Times's History, vol. i., chap. 4. 



12 Before and After the Treaty of Washington: 

moment, the position of the South African repubhcs 
was, in 1900, far stronger with all nations on terms 
of amity with Great Britain than was the position 
of the Confederacy in 186 [-62 with nations then at 
amity with the United States. It consequently 
followed that any precedent created, or rule laid 
down, by a neutral for its own guidance in inter- 
national relations during the first struggle was ap- 
plicable in the second, except in so far as such rule 
or precedent had been modified or set aside by 
mutual agreement of the parties concerned during 
the intervening years. What then were these 
rules and precedents established by Great Britain 
in its dealings with the United States in 1861-5, 
which, unless altered by mutual consent during the 
intervening time, would have been applicable by 
the United States to Great Britain in 1899-1901 ? 

In the opening pages of his account of the do- 
ings of the agents of the Confederacy in Europe 
during our Civil war, Captain James A. Bulloch, 
of the Confederate States Navy, the most trusted 
and efficient of those agents, says that " the Con- 
federate government made great efforts to organize 
a naval force abroad " ; and he adds, truly enough, 
" that the naval operations of the Confederate 
States which were [thus] organized abroad, pos- 
sess an importance and attraction greater than 
their relative effect upon the issue of the struggle." 
Captain Bulloch might well have gone further. He 
micrht have added that, in connection with those 
operations, the public men, high officials, courts of 
law and colonial authorities of Great Britain more 
especially, supported by the press and general 
public opinion of that country, labored conjointly 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 13 

and strenuously, blindly and successfully, to build 
up a structure of rules and precedents, not less 
complete and solid than well calculated, whenever 
the turn of Great Britain might come, — as come in 
time it surely would, — to work the downfall of the 
Empire. As that record carries in it a lesson of 
deep significance to all entrusted with the tempo- 
rary administration of national affairs, it should 
neither be forcrotten nor ignored. It is well that 
statesmen, also, should occasionally be reminded 
that, with nations as with individuals, there is a 
to-morrow, and the whirligig of time ever brings on 
its revenues. "All thinofs come to him who waits"; 
and the motto of the House of Ravenswood was — 
" I bide my time." 

When hostilities broke out in April, 1861, the 
so-called Confederate States of America did not 
have within their own limits any of the essentials 
to a maritime warfare. With a long coast line and 
numerous harbors, in itself and by itself, so far as 
aggressive action was concerned, it could not be, 
or be made, a base of naval operations. It had no 
machine-shops nor yards ; no ship-wrights, and no 
collection of material for ship-building or the equip- 
ment of ships. In the days when rebellion was 
as yet only incipient, it was correctly deemed of 
prime importance to get cruisers ; but a diligent 
search throughout the ports of the Confederacy 
disclosed but one small steamer at all adapted for 
a cruisinof service. Under these circumstances the 
minds of those composing the as yet embryotic 
government at Montgomery turned naturally to 
Europe ; and, in the early days of May, 1861, im- 
mediately after the reduction of Fort Sumter, a 



14 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiiiigton : 

scheme was matured for making- Great Britain the 
base of Confederate naval operations against the 
United States. The nature and scope of the Brit- 
ish statutes had been looked into ; the probability 
of the early issuance of a proclamation of neutral- 
ity by the government of Great Britain was con- 
sidered, and the officials of the Confederate Naval 
Department were already confident that the Mont- 
gomery government would be recognized by Eu- 
ropean powers as a de facto organization. To it, 
as such, belligerent rights would be conceded ; and, 
in such case, the maritime shelter and privileges 
common to belligerents under the amity of nations, 
would be granted to its regularly commissioned 
cruisers. 

The officers in question next looked about for 
some competent Confederate sympathizer, who 
might be despatched to Europe and there be a 
species of Secretary in partibiis. They decided 
upon James A. Bulloch, at the time a lieutenant in 
the United States Navy detailed by the Govern- 
ment for the command of the Bienville, a privately 
owned mail steamer running between New York 
and New Orleans. A Georgian by birth and ap- 
pointment, Lieutenant Bulloch went with his State, 
and at once after Georgia seceded put himself at 
the disposal of the Confederate government. He 
was requested forthwith to report at Montgomery ; 
and there, on the 8th and 9th of May he received 
from S. K. Mallory, the Confederate Naval Secre- 
tary, verbal instructions covering all essential points 
of procedure. On the night of the 9th of May, 
Bulloch left Montgomery for Liverpool, his duly 
designated seat of operations. Arriving there on 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 15 

the 4th of June, Secretary Mallory's assistant at 
once entered on his duties, not only purchasing- 
naval supplies, but, before the close of the month 
he had contracted with a Liverpool ship-builder for 
the construction of a cruiser, and it was already 
partly in frame. The Queen's proclamation of 
neutrality had then been issued some six weeks. 
The vessel now on the stocks was at first called 
the Oreto : afterwards it attained an international 
celebrity as the Florida. Acting with an energy 
which quite justified his selection for the work of 
the Confederacy then in hand to be done. Captain 
Bulloch on the first of the following August entered 
into another contract, this time with the Messrs. 
Laird, under which the keel of a second cruiser 
was immediately afterwards laid in the yards of 
that firm at Birkenhead. The purpose of the Con- 
federate government was well defined. It was not 
merely to buy or build single vessels of war in 
British ports and dockyards, but it was proposed 
to maintain in Liverpool a permanent representa- 
tive of its Navy Department, — a species of branch 
office, or bureau, with a deputy secretary at its 
head, — and, through him, using the ports of the 
Mersey, the Clyde and the Thames as arsenals, to 
construct ships, and secure naval supplies, so long 
as the war might last. No real hindrance was 
anticipated. In other words. Great Britain was to 
be made the base of an organized maritime war- 
fare against the United States, the Confederacy 
itself being confessedly unable to conduct such a 
warfare from within its own limits. The single 
question was — Would Great Britain permit itself 
to be thus used as a naval base and arsenal for the 



1 6 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

construction, equipment and despatch of commerce- 
destroyers and battle ships intended to be used 
against a nation with which it was at peace ? 

Excepting only the good faith, friendly purpose 
and apparently obvious self-interest of a civilized 
government in the last half of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, the provisions of the British Foreign Enlist- 
ment Act of 1819 constituted the only barrier in 
the way of the consummation of this extraordinary 
project, — a project which all will now agree was 
tantamount to a proposal that, so far as commerce- 
destroyers were concerned, the first maritime na- 
tion of the world should become an accomplice in 
piracy before the fact. As the date of its enact- 
ment (1819) implies, the British Foreign Enlist- 
ment Act was passed at the time of the troubles 
incident to the separation of its American depend- 
encies from Spain, and was designed to prevent 
the fitting out in British ports of piratical expedi- 
tions against Spanish commerce, under cover of 
letters-of-marque, &c., issued by South American 
insurrectionary governments. Owing to the long 
peace which ensued on its passage, the Act had 
slept innocuously on the statute book, no case in- 
volving- a forfeiture ever havino- been brouo-ht to 
trial under it. It was an instance of desuetude, 
covering more than forty years. 

A clumsy, cumbersome statute, the Foreign En- 
listment Act was, after the manner of English Acts 
of Parliament, overloaded with a mass of phrases, 
alike unprecise and confused, with so much of tedi- 
ous superfluity of immaterial circumstance "as to 
suggest a suspicion that it must have been " spe- 
cially designed to give scope to bar chicanery, to 



American Civil JVar and War in the Transvaal. 17 

facilitate the escape of offenders, and to embarrass 
and confound the officers of the government charged 
with the administration of law. It was, in short, 
one of those statutes in which the British Parlia- 
mentary draughtsman has prescriptively revelled, 
and through the clauses of which judge and barris- 
ter love, as the phrase goes, to drive a coach-and- 
six. But it so chanced that, in the present case, 
the coach-and-six had, as passengers, the whole 
British ministry, and, in it, they were doomed to 
flounder pitifully along " in the flat morass of [aj 
meaningless verbosity and confused circumlocu- 
tion." '^ Upon the proper construction of this not- 
able act, the Confederate representatives at once 
sought the opinion of counsel ; and they were pres- 
ently advised that, under its provisions, it would be 
an offense for a British subject to build, arm a7id 
equip a vessel to cruise against the commerce of a 
friendly state ; but the mere building of a ship, 
though with the full intent of so using her, was no 
offense ; nor was it an offense to equip a vessel so 
built, if it was without the intent so to use her. 
To constitute an offense the two acts of building a 
ship with intent of hostile use, and equipping the 
same must be combined ; and the things must be 
done in British waters. It hence followed that, 
under the Act, it was lawful for an English firm to 
build a ship in a British ship-yard designed pur- 
posely to prey on American commerce ; it was also 
lawful to sell or buy the articles of necessary equip- 
ment for such vessel, from cordage to arms and 
ammunition ; but the articles of equipment must 
not go into the vessel, thus making of her a com- 

* Geneva Arbitration ; Argionciit of the United States, p. 61. 



1 8 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

plete cruiser, within British maritime jurisdiction. 
The final act of conjunction must be effected at 
some distance greater than one league from where 
a British writ ran. Assuming this construction of 
the Foreign Enlistment Act to be correct, its eva- 
sion was simple. It could be enforced practically 
only with a government strong enough to decline 
to allow its international obligations to be trifled 
with. If, however, those in office evinced the 
slightest indifference respecting the enforcement of 
international obligations, and much more if the 
government was infected by any spirit of conni- 
vance, the act at once became a statute mockery. 

In any large view of policy Great Britain then 
was, as it now is, under strong inducement to insist 
on the highest standard of international maritime 
observance. As the foremost ocean-carrier of the 
world, it ill became her to connive at commerce 
destroying. But, in 1861, Great Britain had a 
divided interest ; and British money-making in- 
stincts are well-developed. She was the arsenal 
and ship-builder of the world, as well as its ocean- 
carrier. Her artizans could launch from private 
dock-yards vessels of any size, designed for any 
purpose, thoroughly equipped whether for peace or 
war; and all at the shortest possible notice. Un- 
der ordinary circumstances, this was a legitimate 
branch of industry. It admitted, however, of easy 
perversion ; and the question in 1861 was whether 
the first of commercial nations would permit its 
laws to be so construed as to establish the princi- 
ple that, in case of war, any neutral might convert 
its ports into nurseries of corsairs for the use or in- 
jury of either belligerent, or of both. This was the 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 19 

exact use the Confederacy in 1861 deliberately 
designed to make of Great Britain. As its author- 
ized agent and representative twenty years later 
expressed it, — " The object of the Confederate 
Government was not merely to buy or build a sin- 
gle ship, but it was to maintain a permanent repre- 
sentative of the Navy Department [in Great Brit- 
ain] and to get ships and naval supplies without 
hindrance as long as the war lasted.""' 

It is now necessary briefly to recall a once famil- 
iar record showing the extent to which Great Brit- 
ain lent itself to this scheme, and the precedents it 
created while so doino-- All through the later sum- 
mer of 1861 — the months following the disgrace of 
Bull Run and the incident of the Trent, — the work 
of Confederate naval construction was pushed vig- 
orously along in the Liverpool and Birkenhead 
ship-yards. Hardly any concealment was attempted 
of the purpose for which the Orcto and the " 290," 
— as the two vessels were called or desienated, — 
was designed. As the w^ork on them progressed, 
it was openly supervised by agents known to be in 
the Confederate employ, while British government 
officials, having free access to the yards, looked to 
it that the empty letter of the law was observed. 
Never was a solemn mockery more carefully en- 
acted ; never was there a more insulting pretence at 
the observance of international obligations ; never 
a more perfect instance of connivance at a contem- 
plated crime, though not so nominated in the bond. 
j The Florida, we are told by Captain Bulloch, 
was the first regularly built war vessel of the Con- 

* Bulloch, The Secret Service of the Confederate States in Europe, 
vol. i, p. 65 ; vol. ii, p. 216. 



20 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

federate States Navy. " She has," he wrote at the 
time, "been twice inspected by the Custom House 
authorities, in compHance with specific orders from 
the Foreign Office. '''" ^' '^ The hammock-net- 
tings, ports, and general appearance of the ship suf- 
ficiently indicate the ultimate object of her construc- 
tion, but * ''" '''■ registered as an English ship, 
in the name of an Englishman, commanded by an 
Englishman, with a regular official number under 
the direction of the Board of Trade, she seems to 
be perfectly secure against capture or interference, 
until an attempt is made to arm her." Another ves- 
sel, carrying the armament of this contemplated 
commerce-destroyer, left England at so nearly the 
same time as the Orcto that those in charge of the 
latter vessel increased her speed, being apprehen- 
sive that their consort would arrive at the point of 
rendezvous first. Making Nassau, an English port, 
the last pretence at concealment as to character 
and destination disappeared, in consequence of the 
heedless talk of a Confederate officer there to join 
her ; a portion of her crew, also, immediately re- 
ported to the British naval commander at the sta- 
tion that the vessel's destination could not be as- 
certained. She was seized ; but, after some legal 
forms and a pretence of a hearing, a decree of res- 
toration was entered. Subsequently, before being 
herself destroyed, she captured, and burnt or bond- 
ed, some seventy vessels carrying the United States 
flag. A precedent complete at every point had been 
created. 

Relying ovt the advice of counsel and the ex- 
perience gained in the case of the Florida, there 
was absolutely no concealment of purpose even at- 



American Civil War and War in the Tra)isvaal, 21 

tempted as respects the Alabama. Built under a 
contract entered into with the avowed accent of the 
Confederacy, that the "290" was designed as a 
Confederate commerce-destroyer was town talk in 
Liverpool, — • " quite notorious," as the American 
consul expressed it. She was launched on the 15th 
of May, 1862, as the Enrico, "with no attempt," as 
Captain Bulloch testifies, " to deceive any one by 
any pretence whatever." Everything was done in 
the "ordinary commonplace way," and "no mys- 
tery or disguise " was deemed necessary.* The 
Lairds knew that they were building a cruiser for 
the Confederate government, specially constructed 
as a commerce-destroyer ; and they carefully ob- 
served what their counsel advised them was the law 
of the land. They simply built a vessel designed to 
do certain work in a war then in progress ; the 
equipment of that vessel, including its armament, 
was in course of preparation elsewhere. Of that 
they knew nothing. They were not informed ; nor, 
naturally, did they care to ask. The vessel and her 
equipment would come together outside of British 
jurisdiction. Such was the law ; Great Britain lived 
under a government of law ; and " to strain the 
law " the government was in no way inclined. The 
agents of the Confederacy, moreover, " had the 
means of knowing with well-nigh absolute certainty 
what was the state of the negotiations between the 
United States minister and Her Majesty's govern- 
ment." t The work of completion was, however, 
pressed forward with significant energy after the 
launching of the vessel ; so that, by the middle of 
June, she went out on a trial trip. An Englishman, 

* Bulloch, vol. ii, p. 229. \ Ibid., vol. i, pp. 229, 260-1. 



22 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

having a Board of Trade certificate, was then en- 
gaged " merely to take the ship to an appointed 
place without the United Kingdom," where she was 
to meet a consort bearinof her armament. 

That armament was in course of preparation else- 
where in Great Britain, and included "everything 
required for the complete equipment of a man-of- 
war." The goods, when ready, were " packed, 
marked, and held for shipping orders." The Agrip- 
pina, a suitable barque of 400 tons measurement, 
was then purchased, and quietly loaded at the Lon- 
don docks. Between the two vessels — the one 
building on the Mersey, the other taking on board 
a cargo in the Thames — there was no apparent con- 
nection. Every arrangement for the destruction of 
the commerce of a nation at peace with Great Brit- 
ain, was being made under the eyes of the customs 
officials, but with scrupulous regard to the provisions 
of the Foreign Enlistment Act. 

A single word from the British Foreign Office 
would then have sufficed to put a stop to the whole 
scheme. That office was fully advised by the Amer- 
ican minister of what was common town-talk at Liv- 
erpool. The Confederate agent there in charge of 
operations was as well known as the Collector of 
the Port. Had those then officially responsible for 
Great Britain's honor and interests been in earnest, 
public notice would have been given to all con- 
cerned, including belligerents, — under the designa- 
tion of evil-disposed persons, — that Her Majesty's 
government did not propose to have Great Britain's 
neutrality trifled with or the laws evaded. Her 
ports were not to be made, by either belligerent, 
directly or through evasion, a basis of naval opera- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 23 

tions against the other. Any ship constructed for 
warlike purposes, upon the builders of which notice 
had been served at the application of either bellig- 
erent, would be held affected by such notice ; and 
thereafter, in case of evasion, would not be entitled 
to the rights of hospitality in any British waters. 
Whether, under the principles of international law, 
such vessel could be held so tainted by evasion 
after notice as to be subject to seizure and detention 
whenever and wherever found within British juris- 
diction, would be matter of further consideration. 
This course was one authorized by international law, 
and well understood at the time. The Attorney 
General, for instance, in debate declared — " I have 
not the least doubt that we have a right, if we 
thought fit, to exclude from our own ports any par- 
ticular ship or class of ships, if we consider that they 
have violated our neutrality." And, three months 
before the first law adviser of the Crown thus ex- 
pressed himself. Sir Vernon Harcourt had said in a 
letter published in the Times — "I think that to 
deny to the Florida and to the Alabama access to 
our ports would be the legitimate and dignified man- 
ner of expressing our disapproval of the fraud which 
has been practiced on our neutrality. If we abstain 
from taking such a course, I fear we may justly lie 
under the imputation of having done less to vindi- 
cate our good faith than the American government 
consented at our instance, upon former occasions, to 
do." Finally, England's Chief Justice laid down 
the rule in the following broad terms, — "A sover- 
eign has absolute dominion in and over his own 
ports and waters. He can permit the entrance into 
them to the ships of other nations, or refuse it ; he 



24 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiingtoii : 

can grant it to some, can deny it to others ; he can 
subject it to such restrictions, conditions, or regula- 
tions as he pleases. But, by the universal comity 
of nations, in the absence of such restrictions of pro- 
hibition, the ports and waters of every nation are 
open to all comers." * 

Unless, therefore, the British ministry was will- 
ing to stand forward as openly conniving at pro- 
ceedings calculated to bring into contempt the law 
and the Queen's proclamation, the course to be 
pursued was plain ; and the mere declaration of a 
purpose to pursue that course, while it would in no 
way have interfered with legitimate ship construc- 
tion, would have put an immediate stop to the 
building and equipment of commerce-destroyers. 
The law, even as it then stood, was sufficient, had 
the goverment only declared a purpose. Had the 
will been there, a way had not been far to seek. 

No such notice was conveyed. In vain the 
American minister protested. No evidence as to the 
character of the proposed cruiser, or the purpose 
for which she was designed, possible for him to 
adduce, was adjudged satisfactory ; and, finally, 
when the case became so flagrant that action could 
not in decency be delayed, f a timely intimation 

* Papers Relating to the Treaty of Washington (Ed. 1872), vol. iv, 
pp. 416, 418. 

t Much has been written, and more said, as to the particular per- 
son upon whom rested responsibility for the evasion of the Alabama. 
Collusion on the part of officers has been charged, and it was at one 
time even alleged that Mr. S. Price Edwards, then collector of the 
port of Liverpool, had been the recipient of a bribe. This is em- 
phatically denied by Captain Bulloch (vol. i, pp. 258-64) and no 
evidence has ever come to light upon which to rest such an improb- 
able imputation. Under these circumstances the following intensely 
characteristic avowal of Earl Russell, in his volume of Recollec- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 25 

reached the Confederate agent through some un- 
known channel, and, on the 28th of July, 1862, the 
Alabama went out on a trial trip at the mouth of 
the Mersey, from which she did not return. With 
British papers, and flying the British flag, she three 
days later got under weigh for the Azores. At al- 
most the same hour, moving under orders from the 
Confederate European Naval Bureau at Liverpool, 
her consort, the Agrippina, loaded with munitions 
and equipment, cleared from London. The two 
met at the place designated ; and there, outside of 
British jurisdiction, the stores, arms and equip- 
ment were duly transferred. A few days later, the 
forms of transfer having been gone through with, the 
British master turned the ship over to the Confed- 
erate commander, his commission was read and 
the Confederate flag run up. After which some- 
what empty ceremonies, the " 290," now the Ala- 
bama, stood purified of any evasion of English law, 
and, as a duly commissioned foreign man-of-war, 
was thereafter entitled to all belligerent rights and 
hospitalities within British jurisdiction. Incredible 
as it now must seem to Englishmen as well as to 
us, a British ministry, of which Lord Palmerston 
was the head, then professed itself impotent to vin- 
dicate its authority or to assert the majesty, or even 

tions and Suggestions, published in 1875, has a refreshing sound. 
Such curt frankness causes a feeling of respect for the individual 
man to predominate over any, or all, other sentiments. The pas- 
sage referred to (p. 407) is as follows :— ' ' I assent entirely to the opin- 
ions of the Lord Chief Justice of England [in his avi^ard in the Ge- 
neva Arbitration] that the ' Alabama ' ought to have been detained 
during the four days in which I was waiting for the opinion of the 
Law Officers. But I think that the fault was not that of the Com- 
missioners of the Customs [as asserted by Lord Cockburn] ; it was 
my fault, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs," 



26 Bcfoi'e and After the Treaty of Washington : 

the dig-nity, of the law. It had been made the dupe 
of what Lord Cockburn not inaptly termed " con- 
trivances," — " the artifices and tricks, to which the 
unscrupulous cunning of the Confederate agents did 
not hesitate to resort in violation of British neutral- 
ity " * — and yet the poor victim of these " artifices 
and tricks" professed itself utterly unable to make 
itself respected, much less to vindicate its authority. 
At a later day Earl Russell recovered the use of his 
faculties and his command of language. He then, 
though the law had not in the mean time been 
changed, found means to let the Confederate 
agents understand that " such shifts and stratagems" 
were " totally unjustifiable and manifestly offensive 
to the British Crown." 

Such are the simple facts in the case. And now, 
looking back through the perspective of forty years 
and speaking with all moderation, is it unfair to ask 
— Was any great nation ever guilty of a more wan- 
ton, a more obtuse, or a more criminal dereliction ? 
The world's great ocean-carrier permitted a bel- 
ligerent of its own creation to sail a commerce-de- 
stroyer through its statutes ; and then, because of 
an empty transfer, set up a brazen pretence that in 
affording protection and hospitality to the vessel 
thus existing through an evasion of its own law, 
Great Britain did not stand an accomplice in piracy. 
" Shall the blessed sun of heaven prove a micher 
and eat black-berries? — a question not to be asked. 
Shall the son of England prove a thief, and take 
purses? — a question to be asked." 

It is not necessary further to follow the law of 

* Papers Relating to the Treaty of Washington (Ed. 1872), vol. iv, 
P- 377- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 27 

Great Britain as then laid down, or to enumerate 
the precedents created under it. One thing led to 
another. In the Autumn of 1S61 Captain Bulloch 
ran the blockade, and, visiting- Richmond, con- 
ferred with his chief, the Secretary of the Confed- 
erate Navy. He then learned that the designs of 
the Richmond government as respects naval oper- 
ations from a British base had " assumed a broader 
range."* Secretary Mallory now contemplated the 
construction in Great Britain of " the best type of 
armored vessels for operations on the coast •^- * * 
to open and protect the blockaded ports. * * * It 
was impossible to build them in the Confederate 
States — neither the materials nor the machines 
were there ; and besides, even if iron and skilled 
artizans had been within reach, there was not a 
mill in the country to roll the plates, nor furnaces 
and machinery to forge them, nor shops to make 
the engines." f This was a distinct step in advance. 
Earl Russell had declared that one great object of 
the British government was to preserve " for the 
nation the legitimate and lucrative trade of ship- 
building " ; and if it was " legitimate " to construct 
a single commerce-destroyer to take part in hos- 
tilities then going on, why was it not legitimate to 
construct a squadron of turreted iron-clads ? It 
certainly was more " lucrative." In the words of 
Mr. Gladstone, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
the Confederate leaders, having made an army. 
" are making, it appears, a navy " ; and the " lucra- 
tive trade " of constructing that navy naturally fell 
to the shipwrights of the Mersey. The Prime 
Minister of Great Britain now, also, boldly took 

* Bulloch, vol. i, p. 277. f Ibid., p. 380. 



28 Before and After the Treaty of Wasliiugton : 

the ground in Parliamentary debate — speaking, of 
course, for the Government — that of this no bel- 
Hgerent had any cause to complain. " As a mer- 
cantile transaction " British merchants and manu- 
facturers were at liberty to supply, and had a right 
to supply, one or both of " the belligerents, not 
only with arms and cannon, but also with ships 
destined for warlike purposes." To the same ef- 
fect the Secretary for Foreign Affairs informed the 
United States minister that, except on the ground 
of any proved violation of the Foreign Enlistment 
Act * * * Her Majesty's Government cannot 
interfere with commercial dealings between British 
subjects and the so - styled Confederate States, 
whether the object of those dealings be money, or 
contraband goods, or even ships adapted for war- 
like purposes." "The cabinet," he moreover on 
another occasion stated, " were of opinion that the 
law [thus set forth] was sufficient, but that legal 
evidence could not always be procured." Of the 
sufficiency of that evidence, the government, acting 
through its legal advisers, was the sole judge. As 
such, it demanded legal proof of a character suf- 
ficient not only to justify an indictment, but to fur- 
nish reasonable grounds for securing a conviction 
thereon. The imputation and strong circumstances 
which lead directly to the door of proof, gave, in 
this case, no satisfaction. Facts of unquestioned 
notoriety could not be adduced. Notoriety was 
not evidence.* A petty jury in an English criminal 
court became thus the final arbiter of Britain's in- 
ternational obligations. If that august tribunal 

'" Papers Relating to the Treaty of Washington, vol. iv, pp. 377, 
479- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 29 

pronounced a case not proven, though the real 
facts were common town talk, the law was not 
violated, and, whatever acts of maritime wrong and 
ocean outrage followed, foreign nations had no 
grounds for reclamation. And this was gravely 
pronounced law ; " Ay, marry ; crowner's quest 
law ! " 

Here, indeed, was the inherent, fundamental de- 
fect of the British position, — what afterwards came 
to being described as the " insularity " of the 
British contentions. One and all, — politicians, 
publicists, jurists, statesmen, — they seemed unable 
to rise above the conception of a municipal rule of 
conduct. Their vision was bounded, on the one 
side by a jury box, and on the other by the benches 
of the House of Commons. The international ob- 
ligations of Great Britain, Earl Russell did not 
cease to contend, were coterminous with the mu- 
nicipal laws of Great Britain ; and if those laws 
did not provide adequate protection for the rights 
and properties of foreign nations it was most un- 
reasonable for the representatives of those nations 
to present claims and complaints to Her Majesty's 
government. Great Britain was only accountable 
in so far as her own laws made her accountable. 
It is almost unnecessary to say that this rule also 
is one which in its converse operation might not 
infrequently lead to inopportune results. 

The Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819 was then 
passed in review. It was pronounced " effectual 
for all reasonable purposes, and to the full extent 
to which international law and comity can require." 
In the opinion of the government, there was no 
occasion for its amendment or strengthening. No 



30 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

move was made to that end ; no recommendation 
submitted to Parliament. On the contrary, when 
in March, 1863, the neiitraUty laws were in debate, 
Lord Palmerston did not hesitate to declare from 
the ministerial benches, if the cry that those laws 
were manifestly defective was raised " for the pur- 
pose of driving Her Majesty's government to do 
something which may be derogatory to the dignity 
of the country, in the way of altering our laws for 
the purpose of pleasing another Government, then 
all I can say is that such a course is not likely to 
accomplish its purpose ^' ''' ''' but the people 
and Government of the United States must not 
imagine that any cry which may be raised will in- 
duce us to come down to this House with a pro- 
posal to alter the law." Thus another door of 
future possible escape was on this occasion closed 
by the British Premier, so to speak, with a slam. 
The law, however manifestly defective, was not 
to be changed to please anyone. 

Meanwhile, as if to make the record at all points 
complete, and to show how very defective this im- 
mutable law was, the Courts passed upon the much- 
discussed Foreign Enlistment Act of 18 19. Under 
the pressure brought to bear by the United States 
minister a test case had been arranged. It was 
tried before a jury in the Court of Exchequer on 
the 22nd of June, 1863, the Laird iron-clads being 
then still on the ways, but in an advanced stage of 
construction. The vessel thus seized and proceeded 
against in order to obtain a construction of the Act 
was the Alexandra. This vessel was being built 
with a view to warlike equipment. Of that, no 
denial was possible. That she was intended for 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 31 

use in the Confederate service was a moral certainty. 
The Alabama was at that time in its full career of 
destruction, — burning, sinking, destroying. Before 
her ravages, the merchant marine of the United 
States was fast disappearing, — the ships composing 
it either going up in smoke, or being transferred to 
other flags. With all these facts admitted or of 
common knowledge, the Lord Chief Baron presid- 
ing at the Alexandra trial proceeded to instruct the 
jury on the law. The Foreign Enlistment Act was, 
he told them, not designed for the protection of 
belligerent powers, or to prevent Great Britain 
being made the base of naval operations directed 
against nations with which that country was at 
peace. The purpose of the statute was solely to 
prevent hostile naval encounters within British 
waters ; and, to that end, it forbade such equipment 
of the completed ship as would make possible im- 
mediate hostile operations, it might be " before they 
left the port." Such things had happened; "and 
that has been the occasion of this statute." He 
closed with these words — " if you think the object 
was to build a ship in obedience to an order, and 
in compliance with a contract, leaving those who 
bought it to make what use they thought fit of it, 
then it appears to me the Foreign Enlistment Act 
has not been in any degree broken." 

The jury, of course, under such an interpretation 
of the statute, rendered a verdict for the defendants, 
and that verdict the audience in the court-room re- 
ceived with an outburst of applause. This outburst 
of applause was significant ; more significant than 
even the charge of the Judge. Expressive of the 
feelings of the British people, it pointed directly to 



32 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

the root of the trouble. The trial took place tow- 
ards the close of June, 1863, — -a few days only be- 
fore Gettysburg ; and, at that time, England, so far 
as the United States was concerned, had reached a 
state of mind Elizabethan rather than Victorian. 
The buccaneering blood, — the blood of Drake, of 
Cavendish, and of Frobisher, — was stirring in Brit- 
ish veins. The Alabama then stood high in public 
admiration, — a British built ship, manned by a Brit- 
ish crew, armed with British guns, it was success- 
fully eluding the "Yankee" ships of war, and de- 
stroying a rival commercial marine. Wherever 
the British jurisdiction extended the Alabama was 
a welcome sojourner from the weary sea. The com- 
pany on the decks of British mail steamers cheered 
her to the echo as they passed. At that time, so 
strong among the influential classes of Great Britain 
was the feeling of sympathy for the South, and so 
intense was the enmity to the Union, mixed with a 
contempt as outspoken as it was ill-advised, that 
those sentiments were well-nigh all-pervasive. 
Speaking shortly after Richard Cobden said — " I 
declare to you that, looking at what is called in a 
cant phrase in London, ' society ' ; looking at so- 
ciety — and society, I must tell you, means the upper 
ten thousand, with whom Members of Parliament 
are liable to come in contact at the clubs and else- 
where in London ; looking at what is called ' society ' 
— looking at the ruling class, if we may use the 
phrase, that meet in the purlieus of London, nine- 
teen-tvventieths of them were firmly convinced from 
the first that the civil war in America could only 
end in separation," Captain Bulloch asserted 
twenty years later that, being thrown while in Eng- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 33 

land a good deal among Army and Navy men " I 
never met one of either service who did not warmly 
sympathize with the South " ; * and he further ex- 
pressed his belief that this was the feeling of " at 
least five out of every seven in the middle and 
upper classes." f To the like effect, Mr. G. W. P. 
Bentinck, — a member of Parliament, — declared in a 
speech at Kings Lynn in October, 1862, that, as far 
as his experience went, " throughout the length and 
breadth of the land, wherever I have travelled, I 
never yet have met the man who has not at once 
said — ' My wishes are with the Southerners ' " ; 
and he went on to add that this feeling was mainly 
due to the fact that the Southerner was " fiorhtino- 
against one of the most grinding, one of the most 
galling, one of the most irritating attempts to estab- 
lish tyrannical government that ever disgraced the 
history of the world." Mr. Gladstone's unfortunate 
utterance at about the same time passed into his- 
tory ; from which it failed not afterwards to return 
sorely to plague him. " We may anticipate with 
certainty the success of the Southern States so far 
as regards their separation from the North. * * * 
That event is as certain as any event yet future and 
contingent can be ; " and again, ten months later, 
he said in Parliament, — -" We do not believe that the 
restoration of the American Union by force is attain- 
able. I believe that the public opinion of this country 
is unanimous upon that subject. * * * I do not 
think there is any real or serious ground for doubt 
as to the issue of this contest." Four months pre- 
vious, Mr. Gladstone's associate in the cabinet, Earl 
Russell, had lent emphasis to this opinion by de- 

* Bulloch, vol. ii, p. 308. \ Ibid., i, 294. 



34 Before and After the Treaty of Washington: 

daring in the House of Lords — " There may be one 
end of the war that would prove a calamity to the 
United States and to the world, and especially ca- 
lamitous to the negro race in those countries, and 
that would be the subjugation of the South by the 
North." With this idea that there could be but 
one outcome of the struggle firmly established in 
their minds, influential members of the Cabinet did 
not urge recognition simply because, in view of the 
certainty of the result, they deemed such action 
unnecessary and impolitic* The whole British 
policy during the Civil War was shaped with a view 
to this future state of affairs, and the creation of bad 
precedents was ignored accordingly. The Union 
was to be divided into two republics, unfriendly to 
each other. There was to be one democratic, free- 
labor republic, or more probably two such, lying 
between the British possessions on the North, and 
a slave-labor, cotton-growing republic on the South ; 
the latter, almost of necessity, acting in close har- 
mony of interest, commercial and political, with 
Great Britain. For Great Britain eternity itself had 
thus no day of reckoning. 

Relying on this simple faith in a certain future, — 
this absolute confidence that the expected only could 
occur, — utterances like the following appeared in 
the editorial columns of the Morning Post, the Lon- 
don journal understood most closely to reflect the 
opinions of the Prime Minister. " From the ruling 
of the judge [in the case of the Alexandra] it ap- 
peared that the Confederate Government might with 
ease obtain as many vessels in this country as they 
pleased without in any manner violating our laws. 

* Bulloch, vol. ii, p. 5. 



Ajuej-ican Civil War and War iti the Transvaal. 35 

It may be a great hardship to the Federals that 
their opponents should be enabled to create a navy 
in foreign ports, but, like many other hardships en- 
tailed on belligerents, it must be submitted to ; " * 
while, five months before this same organ of 
" society " and the " influential classes " had reached 
the comfortable conclusion that, so far as the A/a- 
bama was concerned, the fact " she sails upon the 
ocean is one of those chances of war to which the 
Government of the United States ought with dignity 
and resignation to submit." 



II 

Fortunately for maritime law, fortunately for itself, 
the British Government paused at this point. The 
" Laird rams," as they were now known, presented a 
test case. London " society " and the irresponsible 
press of Great Britain might, like the audience in 
the Court of Exchequer, applaud the charge of the 
Lord Chief Baron, and gladly accept the law he laid 
down that it was legal for a belligerent to create a 
navy in a neutral port. This was actually being done. 
Theretofore the cases had been those of individual 
commerce-destroyers only. Now, an armament was in 
course of construction in a British port intended for a 
naval operation of magnitude against a foreign bel- 
ligerent with which Great Britain was at peace. The 
vessels, moreover, were equipped with weapons of 
offensive warfare— their beaks. Their purpose and 
destination could not be proven in any legal pro- 
ceedings ; but, known of all men, they were hardly 

* Morning Post, March 14, August 10, 1863. 



36 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

concealed by fraudulent bills of sale. The law as 
laid down by the Lord Chief Baron in the case of 
the Alexandra might, therefore, as " crowner's quest 
law " be of the very first class ; but, for Her Maj- 
esty's government such a construction of the law, — 
an act in the Statute-book of Great Britain, — ob- 
viously involved serious consequences. Were they 
prepared to go to the journey's end on the road 
thus pointed out? To what might it lead? To 
what might it not lead ? 

Into the causes of the change of policy which now 
took place it is not necessary here to enter. 
The law was expounded in the Alexandra case on 
the 22nd of June, 1863; Vicksburg surrendered, 
and the battle of Gettysburg was fought, on the 3rd 
and 4th of the following July ; three months later, 
on the 9th of October, the detention of the Laird 
ironclads was ordered. After the rulings of the 
court in the Alexandra case, there can be no ques- 
tion that the law was " strained " to effect this 
seizure.* There can be equally little question that 
the detention of the iron-clads was a surprise to 
the American minister then representing the coun- 
try in London. It marked also a radical change 
in the policy pursued by the Palmerston-Russell 
ministry. Earl Russell apparently now first real- 
ized the fact he afterwards announced in Parlia- 
ment, "that in this conflict the Confederate States 
have no ports, except those of the Mersey and the 
Clyde, from which to fit out ships to cruise against 

* The seizure was severely criticised in the House of Commons ; 
and, on a division — nominally for papers, but really amounting to a 
vote of censure — Earl Russell's conduct in stopping the Laird rams 
was approved by a comparatively small majority. Speech of Attorney - 
General in House of Commons, August i, 1870. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 37 

the Federals " ; and it seems to have dawned upon 
him that, in the case of future hostihties, other nations 
besides Great Britain had ports, and, in certain not 
impossible contingencies, those ports might become 
bases, — -perhaps inconvenient bases, — of maritime 
warfare, as were now those of the Mersey and the 
Clyde. It was a thing much to be deplored that 
rules did work both ways, and that curses, like 
chickens, would come home to roost ; but, this being 
so, it behooved prudent statesmen to give a certain 
degree of consideration to the precedents they were 
creating. 

Whether Earl Russell reasoned in this wise or 
not, certain it is that after September, 1863, Great 
Britain ceased to be available as a base of Confed- 
erate naval operations. The mumcrit it felt so dis- 
posed. Her Majesty's Government found means to 
cause the neutrality of Great Britain to be respected ; 
and, in spite of the rulings of the courts, the For- 
eign Enlistment Act proved something more than 
a "purely nominal" obstacle in the way of a bellig- 
erent in search of a base of maritime warfare. My 
own belief, derived from a tolerably thorough study 
of the period, is that numerous causes contributed 
to bringing that change about. Among the more 
potent of these I should enumerate the stirring of 
the British conscience which followed the Emanci- 
pation Proclamation of September, 1862; the convic- 
tion, already referred to, that any decisive action on 
the part of Great Britain was unnecessary as well 
as impolitic, the ultimate success of the Confederacy 
being a foregone conclusion ; the troubled state of 
affairs on the continent as respects both Poland and 
Denmark ; and, above all, the honest anger of Earl 



38 Before ajid After the Treaty of Washington : 

Russell at the consequences which had ensued from 
the evasion of the Alabama. The precedent he 
had himself helped to create startled him, — he re- 
coiled in presence of its logical consequences ; and, 
in view of the complications then existing on the 
continent, or there in obvious process of develop- 
ment, the great financial and commercial interests of 
Great Britain showed signs of awakening. Omi- 
nous queries were shortly propounded ; and, on the 
evening of the 13th of May, 1864, the head of the 
great house of Barings fairly startled the country 
by rising in the House of Commons, and suggesting 
certain queries to the government, — queries, now, 
thirty-seven years later, of much significance in con- 
nection with events in South Africa; — " I am," Mr. 
Barinof said, " desirous of invitincr the attention of 
the House to the situation in which this country 
will be if the precedents now established are acted 
upon in the event of our being involved in war, 
while other States are neutral. Under the present 
construction of our municipal law there is no neces- 
sity that a belligerent should have a port, or even 
a seashore. Provided she has money, or that 
money is supplied to her by a neutral, she may fit 
out vessels, and those vessels need not go to the 
country to which they are said to belong, but may 
go about the seas dealing destruction to British 
shipping and property. Take the case, which I 
hope we shall avoid, of our being at war with Ger- 
many. There would, as things now stand, be noth- 
ing to prevent the Diet of Frankfort from having a 
fleet. A number of the small States of Germany 
might unite together, and become a great naval 
power. Money is all that is required for the pur- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 39 

pose, and Saxony, without a seashore, might have 
a First Lord of the AdmiraUy, without any docks, 
who might have a large fleet at his disposal The 
only answer we could make under those circum- 
stances to France and the United States, wdio as 
neutrals might lit out vessels against us on the pre- 
tence that they were German cruisers, was that we 
would go to war with them ; so that by the course 
of policy which we are pursuing we render our- 
selves liable to the alternative of having our property 
completely destroyed, or entering into a contest 
with every neutral Power in the world. We ought, 
under these circumstances, to ask ourselves what 
we have at stake. I will not trouble the House 
with statistics on the point, but we all know that our 
commerce is to be found extending itself to every 
sea, that our vessels float in the waters of every 
clime, that even with our cruisers afloat it would 
not be easy to pick up an Alabama, and that the 
destruction of our property might go on despite all 
our powers and resources. What would be the re- 
sult ? That we must submit to the destruction of 
our property, or that our shipping interests must 
withdraw their ships from the ocean. That is a 
danger, the apprehension of which is not confined 
to myself, but is shared by many wdio are far better 
able to form a judgment than I am. Recollect that 
your shipping is nearly twice at large as that of the 
United States. If you follow the principle you are 
now adopting as regards the United States, you 
must be prepared to stand the consequences. So 
strongly was this felt by ship-owners that memorials 
have already been addressed to the government 
upon the subject. * * * Last night the hon. 



40 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

Member for Liverpool presented a petition, signed 
by almost all the great ship-owners of that place, 
enforcing the same view and expressing the same 
anxiety. I am a little surprised at this manifestation, 
because what is happening around us is a source of 
great profit to our ship-owners ; but it is a proof that 
they are sensible that the future danger will far pre- 
ponderate over the present benefit and advantages." 

When too late, it thus dawned even on the ship- 
builders of the Mersey that, for a great commercial 
people, confederacy with corsairs might be a danger- 
ous, even if not, in their eyes, a discreditable voca- 
tion. Firms openly dealing in burglars' tools are 
not regarded as reputable. 

But one way of escape from their own precedents 
might yet remain. It had always been the conten- 
tion of Mr. Charles Sumner that a neutral-built 
ship-ofwar could not be commissioned by a bellig- 
erent on the high seas. It was and remained a 
pirate, — the common enemy of mankind — until its 
arrival at a port of the belligerent to which it be- 
longed, where alone it could be fitted out and com- 
missioned as a ship-of-vvar.* As any port will do 
in a storm, and drowning men proverbially clutch at 
straws, it is possible to imagine a British ship- 
owner, as he foresaw in vision the Transvaal and 
the Orange Free State involved in a war with Great 
Britain, appropriating this contention, and trying to 
incorporate it into the International Code. He 
would then have proceeded to argue somewhat as 
follows : — " Mr. Baring was a banker, not a publi- 
cist. As a publicist he was wrong. A non-mari- 
time nation cannot be a maritime belligerent," &c., 

* Works, vii, 358 ; Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv, p, 394. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 41 

&c. But, during the course of our Civil War, the 
British authorities, legal and political, seemed to 
take pleasure in shutting against themselves every 
possible outlet of future escape. So, in this case, 
referring to the contention of Mr. Sumner, the At- 
torney-General, speaking after Mr. Baring, ex- 
pressed himself as follows : — " To say that a country 
whose ports are blockaded is not at liberty to avail 
herself of all the resources which may be at her 
command in other parts of the world, that she can- 
not buy ships in neutral territory and commission 
them as ships of war without bringing them to her 
own country first, is a doctrine which is quite pre- 
posterous, and all the arguments founded upon 
such a doctrine only tend to throw dust into men's 
eyes and to mislead them." 

The morninpf followinof this sio-nificant debate the 
tone of Lord Palmerston's London organ under- 
went a significant change. Grant and Lee were 
that day confronting each other in the Wilderness, 
resting for a brief space after the fearful wrestle of 
Spotsylvania ; in London, the conference over the 
Schleswig-Holstein struggle was in session, and 
the feelings of Great Britain were deeply enlisted 
on behalf of Denmark, borne down by the united 
weight of Prussia and Austria. So, in view of im- 
mediate possible hostilities, the Post now exclaimed 
— " We are essentially a maritime power, and are 
bound by every motive of self-interest to watch 
with jealousy the observance of neutral maritime 
obligations. We may be at war [South Africa !] 
ourselves ; we have a future to which to look for- 
ward, and we must keep in mind the precept which 
inculcates the necessity of doing to others as we 



42 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington: 

would be done by. * ^' * War is no longer con- 
sidered by the commercial classes an impossibility; 
and the ship-owners of Liverpool are considering 
what is to become of their property should we un- 
happily become involved in war, and innumerable 
Alabamas issue from neutral [American i] ports to 
prey upon British commerce throughout the world. 
Suppose that circumstances obliged us to espouse 
the cause of Denmark against her ruthless enemies, 
would not the German States hasten to follow the 
bad example set them by the Confederates, and at 
which the inefficiency of our law obliges us to con- 
nive ? " And the London organ of " society " and 
the "influential classes" then added this sentence 
which, under certain conditions actually existing 
thirty-five years later would have been of very preg- 
nant significance — " Some petty principality which 
boasts of a standing army of five hundred men, but 
not of a single foot of sea-coast [e.g. the Trans- 
vaal, the Orange Free State] might fit out cruisers 
in neutral [e.g. American] ports to burn, sink and 
destroy the commerce of Great Britain ; and the 
enormous amount of damage which may be done in 
a very short time, even by a single vessel, we know 
from the history of the Alabamar * 

Thus when the v^ar of the Rebellion closed the 
Trans-Atlantic outlook was, for Great Britain, omi- 
nous in the extreme. Just that had come about 
which English public men and British newspapers 
had wearied themselves with asseverating could 
not possibly happen. The Times and Morning 
Post especially had loaded the record with predic- 
tions, every one of which the event falsified ; and, 

* The Post, May 14 and 18, 1864. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 43 

in doing so, they had gone out of their way to 
generate bitter ill-feeling by the arrogant expres- 
sion of a contemptuous dislike peculiarly British 
and offensive. For example, the Times, " well 
aware that its articles weigh in America more 
heavily than despatches " first referred to us as 
"this insensate and degenerate people," and then 
proceeded to denounce " this hateful and atrocious 
war * * -^^ this horrible war," which it declared 
was of such a character that its defenders could not 
find in all Europe a single society where they could 
make themselves heard.* In the same common 
temper, the Standard, reviewing the results of the 
conflict on the very day that Vicksburg, unknown 
to it, had surrendered, declared — " We have 
learned to dislike and almost to despise the North ; 
to sympathize with, and cordially to admire, the 
South. We have learnt that the South is, on the 
whole, in the right ; that the North is altogether, 
wilfully and wickedly in the wrong." But these 
expressions of comfortable contempt were not con- 
fined to the London press. Liverpool, for instance, 
was conspicuous as a hot-bed of Confederate 
sympathy; and, as early as August, 1861, the 
leading journal of that city expressed itself as fol- 
lows — " We have no doubt whatever that the vast 
majority of the people of this country, certainly 
of the people of Liverpool, are in favor of the 
cause espoused by the Secessionists. The defeat 
of the Federalists gives unmixed pleasure ; the 
success of the Confederates is ardently hoped, nay, 
confidently predicted." A year later, the London 
Post referred in the same tone to those whom it 

* July 9, 12, 1862. 



44 Before and After the Treaty of IVashijigton : 

saw fit, in its own great wisdom, to describe as 
" the infatuated people across the Atlantic "^ — " The 
whole history of the war is a history of mistakes on 
the Federal side. Blinded by self-conceit, influ- 
enced by passion, reckless of the lessons of history, 
and deaf of warnings which every one else could 
hear and tremble at, the people of the North 
plunged into hostilities with their fellow-citizens 
without so much as a definite idea what they were 
hghtmg lor, or on what condition they would cease 
fighting. They went to war without a cause, they 
have fought without a plan, and they are prosecut- 
ing it still without a principle." It would then 
pleasantly refer to the "suicidal frenzy" of a con- 
test in which two sections were striving " with a 
ferocity unknown since the times when Indian 
scalped Indian on the same continent"; and sor- 
rowfully added — " American pride contemptuously 
disdains to consider what may be thought of its 
proceedings by the intelligent in this country ; in- 
flated self-sufficiency scorns alike the friendly advice 
of the disinterested and the indignant censures of a 
disapproving world." And then, finally, when its 
every prevision had proved wrong and all its pre- 
dictions were falsified, as it contemplated the total 
collapse of the Confederacy, this organ of " society " 
and the " influential classes " innocently observed — 
" The antipathy entertained by the United States 
toward England has, owing to circumstances en- 
tirely beyond our control, and into which it is un- 
necessary now to enter, been fanned into a fiercer 
flame during the progress of the war; " and it now 
referred to Great Britain as " the mother country." * 

* May IS, 1865. 



American Civil War and War in tJic Transvaal. 45 

Recorded utterances of this character could be 
multipHed indefinitely ; I take these few, selected 
at random, merely to illustrate the extreme diffi- 
culty of the position into which the precedents and 
declarations she herself had established and put 
freely on record brought Great Britain at the close 
of our Civil War. It is useless to say that, as be- 
tween nations, irresponsible utterances through the 
press and from the platform are not entitled to con- 
sideration, and should not be recalled. They, none 
the less, are a fact ; and they are not forgotten. 
On the contrary, they rankle. They did so in 1865. 

Happily, however, for the peace of the world, a 
few great facts then stood forth, established, and of 
record ; and it is these prominent facts which influ- 
ence popular feeling. English built ships, — English- 
manned and English-armed, — had swept the Amer- 
ican merchant marine from the seas ; but, most 
fortunately, an American man-of war of not unequal 
size had, within sight of English shores, sent to the 
bottom of the British channel the single one of 
those commerce-destroyers which had trusted itself 
within reach of our guns. In this there was much 
balm. Again, America was weary of strife, and 
longed for rest ; and it could well afford to bide its 
time in view of the changed tone and apprehensive 
glances which now came across the Atlantic from 
those whose forecast had deceived them into a po- 
sition so obviously false. In common parlance. 
Great Britain had made her bed ; she might now 
safely be left to a prolonged nightmare as she lay 
in it. The United States, — no longer an " insen- 
sate and degenerate people " — could well afford to 
wait. Its time was sure to come. 



46 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

Great Britain, also, was most uncomfortably of 
this same opinion. The more her public men re- 
flected on the positions taken by the Palmerston- 
Russell ministry, and the precedents therein created, 
the worse they seemed, and the less propitious the 
outlook. The reckoning was long ; and it was 
chalked plainly on the wall. It was never lost to 
sight or out of mind. The tendency of events was 
obvious. They all pointed to retaliation in kind ; 
for, in the Summer of 1866 the House of Repre- 
sentatives at Washington passed, without one dis- 
senting vote, a bill to repeal the inhibitions on the 
American neutrality laws against the fitting out of 
ships for belligerents. The threat was overt ; Great 
Britain deprecatingly met it by the passage, in 1 870, 
of a new and stringent Foreign Enlistment Act. 

Just six years elapsed between the close of the 
War of the Rebellion (May, 1864) and the signing 
of the Treaty of Washington (May, 1871). For 
Great Britain those were years of rapid education 
toward a new code of international law. Consider- 
ing the interval traversed, the time of traversing it 
cannot be said to have been long. When, in the 
midst of the Civil War, tidings of the depredations 
of the British-built Confederate commerce-destroy- 
ers reached America, instructions were sent to the 
Minister of the United States in London to demand 
reparation. To this demand Earl Russell, then 
Foreign Secretary, in due time responded. Not 
only did he deny any liability, legal or moral, but 
he concluded his reply with this highly significant, 
not to say petulant, remark, — " I have only, in con- 
clusion, to express my hope that you may not be 
instructed again to put forward claims which Her 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 47 

Majesty's government cannot admit to be founded 
on any grounds of law and justice." '"' 

The discussion seemed closed ; Great Britain 
had apparently taken her stand. In the words ot 
the Foreign Secretary — "Her Majesty's govern- 
ment entirely disclaim all responsibility for any acts 
of the Alabama^ This was in March, 1863. On 
the 19th of June, 1864, the depredations of the Ala- 
bama were brought to a summary close. When 
the Confederate Secretary of War, at Richmond, 
heard of the loss thus sustained, he wrote immedi- 
ately" (July i8th) to the Liverpool bureau of his de- 
partment — " You must supply her place if possible, 
a measure [now] of paramount importance " f This 
despatch reached its destination on the 30th of Au- 
gust, and on the 20th of October the head of the 
bureau had " the great satisfaction of reporting the 
safe departure on the 8th inst." of the Shenandoah, 
from London, and its consort, the Laurel, from 
Liverpool, " within a few hours of each other " ; 
and this in spite of " embarrassing and annoying 
inquiries from the Customs and Board of Trade 
officials." The Shenandoah now took up the work 
of destruction which the Alabama was no longer 
in position to continue. It thus devolved on the 
American minister to present further demands 
on the Foreign Secretary. But the situation was 
now materially changed. Earl Russell had ab- 
ruptly closed the correspondence over the dep- 
redations of the Alabama seven weeks before the 
unfortunate battle of Chancellorsville ; Lee sur- 
rendered at Appomattox just two days after Mr. 
Adams brought to the notice of the Foreign Secre- 

*Dip. Cor., 1863, 380. t Bulloch, vol. ii, p. 112. 



48 Before and After the Treaty of Washiugton : 

tary the depredations of the Shenandoah. A long- 
correspondence ensued, which was closed on the 
2d of the following December by Lord Clarendon, 
Earl Russell's successor as Foreign Secretary. His 
despatch was brief; but in it he observed "that no 
armed vessel departed during the war from a Brit- 
ish port' to cruise against the commerce of the 
United States " ; and he further maintained that 
throughout the war "the British government have 
steadily and honestly discharged all the duties in- 
cumbent on them as a neutral power, and have 
never deviated from the obligations imposed on 
them by international law." And yet in this corre- 
spondence the first step in the direction of a settle- 
ment was taken, — a step curiously characteristic of 
Earl Russell. As indicative also of the amount of 
progress yet made on the long road to be traversed, 
it was the reverse of encouraofinof. Earl Russell 
had got Great Britain into a position from which 
she had in some way to be extricated. The events 
of April and May, 1865, in America were very sig 
nificant when viewed in their bearing on the fast 
rising European complications incident to the blood- 
and-iron policy to which Count Bismarck was delib- 
erately giving shape. Dark clouds, ominous of 
coming storm, were hanging on the European hori- 
zon ; while America, powerful and at peace, low- 
ered angrily British-ward from across the Atlantic. 
It was a continuous, ever-present menace, to be 
averted only when approached in a large way. 
One course, and but one course, was now open to 
the British statesman. To see and follow it called 
for an eye and mind and pen very different, and far 
more quick and facile, than the eye, mind and pen 



American Civil War and War in tJie Transvaal. 49 

with which nature had seen fit to endow the younger 
scion of the ducal house of Bedford. 

Had he been equal to the situation, it was then 
in the power of Earl Russell to extricate Great Brit- 
ain from the position into which he had brought 
her, and out of the nettle, danger, to pluck the 
flower, safety. Nor would it have been difficult so 
to do, and that without the abandonment of any po- 
sition he had taken. Satiated with battle and sat- 
isfied with success, America was then in complaisant 
mood. A complete victor is always inclined to be 
magnanimous, and that was a time when, as Mr. 
Sumner afterwards expressed it, " we would have 
accepted very little." * Taking advantage of this 
national mental mood, it would have been possi- 
ble for Earl Russell then, while extricating Great 
Britain from a false position, to have at once oblit- 
erated the recollection of the past and forestalled 
the Treaty of Washington, securing at the same 
time the adoption at little cost of a new principle of 
international law obviously in the interest of Great 
Britain. Still insisting in his correspondence with 
the American minister that Her Majesty's govern- 
ment had, in the lanofuaee of his successor, " stead- 
ily and honestly discharged all the duties incumbent 
on them as a neutral power," and hence had in- 
curred no liability under any recognized principle or 
precedent of international law for depredations com- 
mitted by Her Majesty's subjects beyond her juris- 
diction, — adhering firmly to this contention, he 
mio^ht have orone on to recosrnize in the lieht of a 
record which he had already admitted was a " scan- 
dal" and "a reproach to our laws," that a radical 

* Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv, p. 384. 



50 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiiugtoii : 

change in the International code was obviously de- 
sirable, and that the time for it had come. The 
neutral should be responsible for results whenever, 
after due notice of a contemplated infraction was 
given (as in the cases of the Florida and Alabama), 
she permitted her territory to be made by one bel- 
ligerent the base of operations against another. 
The laws ought, he would have admitted, to be ad- 
equate to such an emergency ; and they should be 
enforced. He might well then have expressed the 
honest regret Great Britain felt that her laws had 
during our Rebellion proved inadequate, and a 
proper sense of the grievous injury the United 
States had in consequence sustained. The rest of 
the way out would then have been plain to him. In 
view of Great Britain's commercial and maritime in- 
terests, she could well afford to incur large pecuni- 
ary sacrifices to secure the future protection in- 
volved in the change of international law contended 
for by the American government. She could not 
ask that protection for the future with no regard to 
the past. That Great Britain had incurred to a cer- 
tain extent a moral obligation through the insuf- 
ficiency of her statutes, combined with the unsatis- 
factory state of international law, could not be denied 
in view of the admission already made that the 
cases of the Confederate commerce-destroyers were 
a " scandal " and a " reproach." Under these cir- 
cumstances Great Britain was prepared to assent to 
the modifications of international law now contended 
for by the United States ; and, to secure the mani- 
fest future advantage involved in their adoption, 
would agree, subject to reasonable limitations as to 
extent of liability, &c., to have those principles op- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 51 

erate retrospectively in the case of such Confed- 
erate commerce-destroyers as had, after notice 
given, sailed from British ports of origin during the 
Civil War. 

In the light of what afterwards occurred, including 
the Treaty of Washington and the results of the 
Geneva Arbitration, it is not difficult to imaeine the 
astonishment with which the American Minister 
would have read a despatch couched in these terms, 
and the gratification with which the American peo- 
ple would have hailed it. It would have been, in 
the reverse, a repetition of the Trent experience. 
The clouds would all have rolled away. While the 
national pride of Great Britain would have suffered 
no hurt, that of the United States would have been 
immensely flattered. The one country would have 
got itself gracefully, and cheaply, out of an impossible 
position. It would have secured an advantage of 
inestimable future value at a cost in reality nominal, 
and a cost which it afterwards had to pay; the other 
party would have achieved a great diplomatic vic- 
tory, crowning and happily rounding out its mili- 
tary successes. Most unfortunately, as the result 
showed. Earl Russell did not have it in him thus to 
rise to the occasion. On the contrary, with that 
curious, conventional conservatism which seems in- 
nate in a certain class of English public men, — an 
inability to recognize their own interests if pre- 
sented in unaccustomed form, — the British Foreion 
Secretary now declined to consider those very 
changes in the law which Parliament five years 
later voluntarily adopted, and which, seven years 
later. Great Britain agreed to incorporate in a sol- 
emn treaty. The proposed liability for the abuse o 



52 Befoj'c and After the Treaty of Washington : 

neutrality by belligerents, so invaluable to England, 
Lord Russell now characterized as ' most burden- 
some, and, indeed, most dangerous " ; while, with a 
simplicity almost humorous, he ejaculated, " surely 
we are not bound to go on making new laws, ad in- 
finituni, because new occasions arise." "" 

So, high-toned Englishman as he was. Lord 
Russell, guided by his instincts and traditions, as 
Prime Minister characteristically went on to make 
perceptibly worse what, as Foreign Secretary, he 
had already made quite sufficiently bad. He did 
not aggrandize, he distinctly belittled, his case. In 
reply to the renewed demands of the American 
Minister, he suggested, in a most casual way, the 
appointment of a joint commission, to which should 
be referred " all claims arisinof durinof the late civil 
war [his note was dated August 30th, nearly four 
months after the capture of Jefferson Davis] which 
the two powers shall agree to refer." The corre- 
spondence was at once published in the Gazette; 
and, so general was the proposition of reference, 
that the Times, in commenting editorially on it the 
morning after publication, admitted the desirability 
of a settlement, and construed the proposal of a 
commission as desio^ned to embrace all the Ameri- 
can claims. The "Thunderer's" utterance on this 
point might be inspired, — a feeler of public opinion. 
A possible way out seemed to open. Earl Russell 
characteristically lost no time in closing it. At a 
later day, after the Alabama claims had been arbi- 
trated and paid, his Lordship asserted that-he had 
always been willing to have them assumed, or, as 
he expressed it, would " at once have agreed to arbi- 

* The official correspondence in respect to the Alabama, p. 145. 



American Civil War and War in tJie Transvaal. 53 

tration," could he have received assurances on cer- 
tain controverted issues, involving, as he consid- 
ered, the honor and dignity of Great Britain.* 
This was clearly an after-thought, reached in the 
light of subsequent events. No suggestion of the 
sort was ever made by him to Mr. Adams ; and 
when, in August, 1865, such a possible construc- 
tion was put upon his despatches, he made haste 
to repudiate it. In fact. Earl Russell, still Foreign 
Secretary but soon to become Premier, was not 
yet ready to take the first step in the educational 
process marked out for Great Britain. The dose 
was, indeed, a bitter one ; no wonder Lord Rus- 
sell contemplated it with a wry face. 

So the Foreign Secretary in August, ic''65, lost 
no time in firmly closing the door which seemed 
opening. The day following the editorial implica- 
tion of the Times there appeared in its columns an 
official correction. The correctness of the implica- 
tion was denied. As Mr. Adams wrote in his 
diary, the proposal of a joint commission, thus ex- 
plained, " really stands as an off"er to refer the Brit- 
ish claims, and a facile refusal to include ours. 
Wonderful liberality ! " ; and, a few days later, he 
added — "the issue of the present complication now 
is that Great Britain stands as asking for a com- 
mission through which to procure a settlement of 
claims advanced by herself, at the same time that 
she refuses at the threshold to permit the introduc- 
tion of all the material demands we have against 
her. Thus the British position passes all the time 
from bad to worse. The original blunder, inspired 
by the over-eagerness to see us divided, has im- 

* RecoUt'ctions and Suggestions, p. 278. 



54 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

pelled a neutral policy, carried to such extremes of 
encouragement to one belligerent as seemingly to 
hazard the security of British commerce, whenever 
the country shall become involved in a war. The 
sense of this inspires the powers of Eastern Europe 
with vastly increased confidence in pursuing their 
particular objects. It is not difficult to see that 
whatever views Russia may ultimately have on 
Constantinople will be much fortified by a con- 
sciousness of the diversion which it might make 
through the neutral ports of the United States 
against the British commerce of one half of the 
globe. We lose nothing by the passage of time ; 
Great Britain does." 

This somewhat obvious view of the situation evi- 
dently suggested itself to the mind of Earl Rus- 
sell's successor in the Foreign Office, for Earl Rus- 
sell, on the death of Lord Palmerston in the Autumn 
of 1865, became Prime Minister, So, one day in 
the following December, Mr. Adams was sum- 
moned to an official interview with the new Secre- 
tary. The conversation at this interview, after the 
matters immediately in hand were disposed of, 
passed to the general and well-worn subject of the 
neutrality observed by Great Britain during the 
struggle which, seven months before, had come to 
its close. Lord Clarendon, Mr, Adams wrote, in- 
sisted that the neutrality " had been perfectly kept ; 
and I signifying my conviction that a similar obser- 
vation of it, as between two countries so closely 
adjacent as Great Britain and France, would lead 
to a declaration of war by the injured party in 
twenty-four hours. Here we might have closed 
the conference, but his Lordship proceeded to con- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 55 

tinue it by remarking that he had it on liis mind to 
make a suggestion. He would do so. He went 
on to express his long conviction of the expediency 
of a union of sentiment and policy between two 
great nations of the same race. He hoped to see 
them harmonize, after the immediate irritation con- 
sequent upon the late struggle should have passed 
away, more than ever before. There were many 
thino-s in what was called International Law that 
are now in a vague and unsatisfactory condition ; it 
would, therefore, seem very desirable that by some 
form of joint consultation, more or less extensive, 
these points could be fixed on something like a 
permanent basis. He enquired of me whether I 
thought my government would be at all inclined to 
entertain the idea. I replied that the object was 
certainly desirable ; but that, in the precise state 
in which things had been left, I could give no opin- 
ion on the question proposed. All that I could do 
was to report it ; and that not in any official way. 
His Lordship talked a little grandly about our over- 
looking the past, letting bygones be bygones, and 
considering these questions solely on their abstract 
importance as settling great principles. He said 
that two such very great countries could scarcely 
be expected to stoop to concessions or admissions 
in regard to one another. Would I reflect upon 
the whole matter. All this time I was rather a lis- 
tener than a speaker, and committed myself to noth- 
ing but vague professions. The fact stares up that 
this government is not easy at the way the case has 
been left by Lord Russell, and desires to get out of 
it without mortification. My own opinion is rather 
against any effort to help them out, I ought to 



56 Before and Aftei- the Treaty of Washington : 

note that yesterday Mr. W. E. Forster called to 
see me for the purpose of urging precisely the same 
tentative experiment at Washington. He reasoned 
with me more frankly, in the same strain, and evi- 
dently contemplated a more complete process of 
rectification of the blunder than Lord Clarendon 
could hint. I also talked to him with more free- 
dom, in a strain of great indifference about arriving 
at any result ; the advantage was on our side, and 
I saw no prospect of its diminishing with time. He 
ended by asking me to think a little longer about 
a mode of running the negotiation ; for, if it could 
be done, he felt sure that enough power could be 
applied to bring this government to consent to it. 
I replied that all that could be done now must pass 
through private channels. The record was made 
up, and I had no inclination to disturb it." 

This call of Mr. Forster at that particular junct- 
ure was significant ; for Mr. F'orster less than a 
month before had gone into Earl Russell's ministry, 
becoming Under Secretary for the Colonies ; and 
Mr. Forster was well known to be a friend of the 
United States. Badly compromised by Lord Rus- 
sell's blundering committals, the government at 
least appreciated the situation, and was feeling for 
a way out. The position now taken by the Foreign 
Secretary and Mr. Forster was clearly suggestive 
of the subsequent Johnson-Clarendon convention. 
Nothing, however, immediately resulted. Lord 
Clarendon had, indeed, at the time of his talk with 
Mr. Adams, already put his suggestion in shape to 
be formally submitted to Secretary Seward through 
the British minister at Washington ; and when, six 
weeks later, his despatch appeared in the Blue 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 57 

Book, Mr. Adams wrote: "The object is now evi- 
dent. It is to blunt the effect of Lord Russell's 
original blunder, and try to throw the odium of it 
back by a new offer, which we must decline. The 
contrivance will scarcely work. It is certainly civil 
to propose that we should bear all the conse- 
quences of their policy, and consent to secure 
them against any future application of it to them- 
selves." 

As showing how very sensitive to the situation 
in which they had been placed the English now 
were, Mr. Adams two days later mentioned a long 
conversation with Mr. Oliphant, a member of Par- 
liament then just back from a visit to America. The 
Fenian movement was at that time much in evi- 
dence through its British dynamite demonstrations, 
and the Irish in the United States were conse- 
quently in a state of chronic excitement Mr. Oli- 
phant called in regard to it. After some discussion 
of that matter, the conversation drifted to the policy 
pursued by the British government toward the 
United States, of which Mr. Oliphant " evidently had 
not approved. It should have been either positive 
intervention, or positive amity. The effort to avoid 
both had excited nothing but ill-will from both par- 
ties in the war. One Southern man whom he had 
met had gone so far as to declare that he was ready 
to fight England even on the case of the Alabama. 
I briefly reviewed the course taken, and pointed out 
the time when the cordiality between the countries 
could have been fully established. It was not im- 
proved; and now I had little hope of restoring it 
for many years." It was during the ensuing Sum- 
mer that the lower House of Congress passed by 



58 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

acclamation the bill already referred to, repealing- 
the inhibitions of our neutrality laws. 

A change of ministry now took place in Great 
Britain. Earl Russell, with the Liberals, went out 
of office, and Lord Derby, at the head of the Con- 
servatives, came in. Lord Stanley, the oldest son 
of the new Premier, succeeded Lord Clarendon in 
the Foreign Office, and again the old straw was 
threshed over. A distinct step was, however, now 
marked in advance. The new Prime Minister took 
occasion to intimate publicly that a proposition for 
the arrangement of the Alabama claims would be 
favorably entertained; and the Times, oi Q.owr?>Q. un- 
der inspiration, even went so far as to admit that 
Earl Russell's position on that subject was based on 
a "somewhat narrow and one-sided view of the 
question at issue. It was not safe," it now went on 
to say, " for Great Britain to make neutrals the sole 
and final judges of their own obligations." This 
was a distinct enlargement of the " insular" view. It 
amounted to an abandonment of the contention that 
a petty jury in an English criminal court was the 
tribunal of last resort on all questions involving the 
international obligations of Great Britain. 

The interminable diplomatic correspondence now 
began afresh ; and, in the course of it. Secretary 
Sew^ard rested the case of the United States largely 
on what both he and Mr. Adams termed " the pre- 
mature and injurious proclamation of belligerency " 
issued by the British government in May, i86t. 
This he pronounced the fruitful source whence all 
subsequent evil came. Lord Stanley took issue 
with him on that point. He did not deny a respon- 
sibility for the going forth of Confederate commerce- 



Ainerican Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 59 

destroyers from British ports, and a certain liability 
for the damages by them caused ; but. he contended, 
the British government could not consent to arbi- 
trate the question whether the Confederacy was 
prematurely recognized as a belligerent. The rec- 
ognition of belligerency in any given case was, he 
contended, a matter necessarily resting in the dis- 
cretion of a sovereign, neutral power. He inti- 
mated, however, a willingness to arbitrate all other 
questions at issue. 

In view of the position always from the com- 
mencement taken by the American Secretary of 
State and his representative in London, this limited 
arbitration could not be satisfactory. Time and 
again Secretary and Minister had emphasized the 
impropriety and unfriendliness of the Queen's Proc- 
lamation of May 13th, 1861, and the consequences 
thereof, so momentous as scarcely to admit of com- 
putation. Accordingly, the discussion again halted. 
In June, 1868, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, 
succeeded Mr. Adams in London ; and, once more, 
negotiations were renewed. And now the British 
government had got so far on the way to its ulti- 
mate and inevitable destination, that, a discreet si- 
lence being on both sides observed in the matter of 
the proclamation of May, 1861, a convention was 
readily agreed to covering all claims of the citizens 
and subjects of the two countries against the gov- 
ernments of each. While this treaty was in course 
of negotiation, another change of ministry took 
place in Great Britain ; and Mr. Gladstone, who 
had been Chancellor of the Exchequer throughout 
the Civil War, became Premier, Earl Russell being 
now finally retired from official life. Lord Claren- 



6o Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

don was again placed in charg-e of the Foreign Of- 
fice. Under these circumstances, the form of con- 
vention agreed to by Lord Derby was revised by 
his successor in such a way as to make it reasonably 
satisfactory to Secretary Seward, and, on the 14th 
of January, 1869, it received the signatures of Mr. 
Johnson and Lord Clarendon. It was known as 
the Johnson-Clarendon Convention. 

In hurrying this very important negotiation to so 
quick a close both Secretary Seward and Reverdy 
Johnson were much influenced by a very natural 
ambition. They greatly desired that a settlement 
of the momentous issues between the two great 
English-speaking nations should be effected through 
their agency. Mr. Seward especially was eager in 
his wish to carry to a final solution the most difficult 
of the many intricate complications which dated back 
to the first weeks of his occupation of the State De- 
partment. Accordingly he did not now repeat his 
somewhat rhetorical arraignment of Great Britain 
in the correspondence of two years before, because 
of the proclamation of 1861. It had become simply 
a question of the settlement of the claims of indivi- 
dual citizens and subjects of one country against the 
government of another. Lord Stanley's contention 
on the belligerency issue was tacitly accepted as 
sound. This, as will presently appear, implied a 
o-reat deal. It remained to be seen whether that 
primal offence, — that original sin which 

" Brought death hito the world and all our woe," 

could thus lightly and in silence be relegated to the 

limbo of things unimportant, and so, quite forgotten. 

The negotiation had been entered upon in Au- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 6i 

gust, 1868; the convention was executed in Janu- 
ary following. But in the interim a presidential 
election had taken place in the United States ; and^ 
when the treaty reached America, the administra- 
tion of Andrew Johnson was, in a few weeks only 
to be replaced by that of General Grant. Secretary 
Seward would then cease to be at the head of the 
Department of State ; and, as he now wrote to 
Reverdy Johnson, "the confused light of an incom- 
ing administration was spreading itself over the 
country, rendering the consideration of political sub- 
jects irksome if not inconvenient." Charles Sumner 
was at that time chairman of the Senate Committee 
on Foreign Relations, a position he had held 
through eight years. As chairman of that commit- 
tee the fate of the treaty rested largely with him. 
The President-elect, with no very precise policy in 
his mind to be pursued on the issues involved, 
wished to have the claims convention q-q over until 
his administration was in office; and when, in Feb- 
ruary, the convention was taken up in the Senate 
committee, all its members expressed themselves 
as opposed to its ratification. " We begin to- 
day," Mr. Sumner then said, referring to the re- 
jection of the proposed settlement as a foregone 
conclusion, "an international debate, the greatest 
of our history, and, before it is finished, the greatest 
of all history." * 

* Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv, p. 368. 



62 Before and After the Treaty of Wasldngton 



III 

It was now that Mr. Fish came upon the scene, 
as the successor of Secretary Seward in the Depart- 
ment of State. And here, perhaps, it would be 
proper for me to say that I had no acquaintance of 
a personal sort with Mr. Fish. Born in New York, 
in 1808, he died at Garrison-on-the-Hudson in 1893. 
He was, I am informed, President of this Society 
for two years, — 1867-69, — necessarily resigning 
the office when he accepted a position in the Cab- 
inet of President Grant. Later his name appears 
as Vice-President, an office from which he withdrew 
in 1888 because of advancing years. It so chanced 
also that I never but once met Mr. Fish. In the 
summer of 1890, I think it was, some years preced- 
ing his death, I passed a morning with him by ap- 
pointment at his country home at Garrison, going- 
there to obtain from him, if I could, some information 
on a subject I was then at work on. Beyond this, 
I knew him only as a public character, more or less 
actively engaged in political life through twenty-five 
exceptionally eventful years. 

Held in its Committee of Foreign Affairs, the 
Johnson-Clarendon convention was not acted upon 
by the Senate, at the time sitting in executive ses- 
sion, until the 13th of April, 1869. It was then re- 
jected by a practically unanimous vote (54 to i) fol- 
lowing an elaborate speech in condemnation of it by 
the chairman of the committee having it in charge. 
That speech was important. It marked a possible 
parting of the ways. In that speech, and by means 
of it, Mr. Sumner not only undid, and more than 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 63 

undid, all that yet had been done looking to an am- 
icable adjustment of the questions at issue between 
the two nations, but he hedged thick with difficul- 
ties any approach to such an adjustment in the 
future. To appreciate this, the essential feature of 
the Clarendon-Johnson convention must be borne 
constantly in mind. 

As I have already said, that convention provided 
only for the settlement of the claims of individuals. 
The question of liability was to be referred to ar- 
bitration. The right of Great Britain to judge for 
itself as to the time and manner of the recognition 
of the Confederacy as a belligerent power was not 
called in question, or submitted to arbitrament. A 
settlement was thus made possible ; indeed, the 
way to a settlement was opened wide. The con- 
cession was also proper ; for, viewed historically, 
and with a calm regard for recognized principles of 
international law, it must be admitted that the long 
and strenuously urged contention of Secretary Sew- 
ard and Mr. Adams over what they described as the 
"premature and injurious proclamation of belliger- 
ency," and the consequences of the precipitancy of 
Great Britain in the early stages of the Rebellion, 
was by them carried to an undue length. Un- 
questionably the British ministry did issue the very 
important proclamation of May, 1861, with undue 
haste ; and, in so doing, they were unquestionably 
actuated by a motive they could not declare. The 
newly accredited American Minister had not then 
reached London ; but he was known to be on his 
way, and, in fact, saw the just issued proclamation 
in the Gazette the morninof of his arrival. The in- 
tention of the Government undoubtedly was that 



64 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

this question should be disposed of, — be an accom- 
pHshed fact, — in advance of any protests. It had 
been decided on ; discussion was useless. This 
was neither usual nor courteous ; and from it much 
was naturally inferred : but it by no means followed 
that the step was taken in an unfriendly spirit, or 
that it in fact worked any real prejudice to the 
Union cause. That it was a grievous blow, given 
with a hostile intent and the source of infinite sub- 
sequent trouble and loss to the United States gov- 
ernment, Secretary Seward and Mr. Adams always 
afterwards maintained ; and, during the war, very 
properly maintained. But for it, they asserted 
and seem even to have persuaded themselves, the 
Rebellion would have collapsed in its infancy. Be- 
cause of it, the struggling insurrection grew into a 
mighty conflict, and was prolonged to at least twice 
the lengfth of life it otherwise would have attained. 
And for this, and for the loss of life and treasure in 
it involved. Great Britain stood morally account- 
able ; or, as Secretary Seward years afterwards 
saw fit to phrase it, in rhetoric which now impresses 
one as neither sober nor well considered, it was 
Her Majesty's proclamation which conferred " upon 
the insurrection the pregnant baptismal name of 
Civil War." 

There then was, and there now is, nothing on 
which to base so extreme an assumption. On the 
contrary, the historical evidence tends indisputably 
to show that, though designedly precipitate, the 
proclamation was issued in no unfriendly spirit. On 
this point, the statement of William E. Forster is 
conclusive. Mr. Forster, then a newly elected 
member of Parliament, himself urged the issuance 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 65 

of the proclamation, and looked upon it as a point 
gained for the cause of the Union;* and, eight 
years later, he declared that " from personal recol- 
lection and knowledge " he could testify that " the 
proclamation was not made with unfriendly c?;///;///.s^" 
to the United States. On the contrary, he showed 
it was issued " in accordance with the earnest 
wishes of himself and other friends of the North." f 
Ae?iin, there is orood ground on which to arg-ue 
that the premature issuance of the proclamation, 
however intended, worked most happily in favor of 
the Union cause. J It is obvious that the proclama- 
tion could not in any event have been withheld 
more than ninety days ; for, within that period, the 
Confederacy had at Manassas incontrovertibly es- 
tablished its position as a belligerent, and the Con- 
federate flag on the high seas, combined with a 
Union blockade of 3,000 miles of hostile coast, was 
evidence not easily explained away, of a dc facto 
government on land. Under such conditions, it is 
idle to maintain that the recognition of belligerency 
did not fairly rest in the discretion of a neutral, the 
rights of whose people were being daily compro- 
mised, while their property was more than merely 
liable to seizure and confiscation. Moreover, had 
the recognition been delayed until after the dis- 
grace of Bull Run, it would in all probability have 
been complete, and have extended to a recognition 
of nationality as well as of mere de facto belliger- 
ency. Nor, finally, is there anything in the record, 
as since more fully developed, which leads to the 
belief that the struo-a-le would have been shorter 

* Reid's Forsfer, vol. i, p. 335. f /l>itL,vo\. ii, p. 12. 

XLife of C. F. Adams, American Statesman Series, pp. 171-4. 



66 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

even by a month, or in any degree less costly as 
respects either life or treasure, had the Confederacy 
never been buoyed up by the confident hope of a 
voluntary foreign recognition, and consequent aid 
from without. The evidence is indeed all to the 
opposite effect. As since developed it is fairly con- 
clusive that, almost to the end, and unquestionably 
down to the close of 1863, while the Confederates, 
rank and file as well as leaders civil and military, 
confidently counted on being able through the po- 
tency, of their cotton control, to compel an even re- 
luctant European recognition, they never for a mo- 
ment doubted their ability to maintain themselves, 
and achieve independence without extraneous aid of 
any kind. Thirty years in preparation, calling into 
action all the resources of a singularly masterful 
and impulsive race, numbering millions and occu- 
pying a highly defensible territory of enormous 
area, the Confederate rebellion was never that 
sickly, accidental foster-child of Great Britain which, 
in all their diplomatic contentions. Secretary Sew- 
ard and Senator Sumner tried so hard to make it 
out, — a mere bantling dandled into premature ex- 
istence by an incomplete foreign recognition. On 
the contrary, from start to finish, it was Titanic in 
proportions and spirit. It presented every feature 
of war on the largest scale, domestic and foreign. 
From the outset, neutral interests were involved ; 
foreign opinion was evoked. In face of such con- 
ditions and facts as those to go on to the end of 
the chapter asserting that such a complete and for- 
midable embodiment of all-pervasive warlike en- 
ergy should through years have been ignored as 
an existinof fact and refused a recop^nition even as 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 67 

bellig-erent, was, historically speaking, tlie reverse 
of creditable, — it was puerile. Yet, after this un- 
paralleled struggle had been brought to a close, 
Secretary Seward had the assurance to assert in a 
despatch to Mr. Adams written in January, 1867, 
— " Before the Queen's proclamation of neutrality 
the disturbance in the United States was merely a 
local insurrection. It wanted the name of war to 
enable it to be a civil war and to live " ; and this 
was merely the persistent iteration of a similar 
statement likewise made to Mr. Adams shortly 
prior to the 1S62 disasters at Shiloh and before 
Richmond, — " If Great Britain should revoke her 
decree concedins: belliorerent riorhts to the insur- 
gents to-day, this civil strife * * * would end 
to-morrow." ^' 

The Johnson-Clarendon convention was open to 
criticism at many points, and its rejection by the 
Senate was altogether defensible. It did, how- 
ever, have one merit, it quietly relegated to ob- 
livion the wholly indefensible positions just referred 
to. In so far it was thoroughly commendable. By 
so much the discussion approached a conimon- 
sense, amicable settlement, on a rational basis. 
Unfortunately it was upon that very feature of the 
treaty Mr. Sumner characteristically directed his 
criticism and brought his rhetoric to bear. In so 
doing he gave the debate a violent wrench, forcing 
it back into its former impossible phase ; and, in so 
far as in him lay, he made impossible any future 
approach to an adjustment. Recurring in his 
speech, subsequently published by order of the 
Senate, to the sentimental grounds of complaint 

* Dip. Cor., 1S62, p. 43. 



68 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

because of conjectural injuries resulting from pre- 
cipitate action based on an assumed unfriendly pur- 
pose in the issuance of the proclamation of May 13, 

1 86 1, he proceeded to do what his great model 
Burke had declared himself unwilling to do, — he 
framed an indictment of a whole people, — an in- 
dictment of many counts, some small, others gran- 
diose, all couched in language incontestably Sum- 
neresque. In 1869 he fairly outdid Seward in 

1862. Because of the proclamation, and because 
of that solely, he pronounced Great Britain respon- 
sible not only for the losses incurred through the 
depredations of all British-built Confederate com- 
merce-destroyers, but for all consequent losses and 
injuries, conjectural and consequential, computable 
or impossible of computation, including the entire 
cost of the Civil War during half its length, and an 
estimate of the value of a large, and increasing, 
proportion of the world's carrying trade ; with in- 
terest to date of settlement on the whole. The 
" war prolongation " claim, as it was called, Mr, 
Gladstone afterwards estimated as alone amounting 
to eight thousand million dollars (^1,600,000,000) ; 
while Mr. Sumner, from lack of information only, 
failed to include a trifle of an hundred millions, 
which the Confederate Secretary of the Navy had, 
in 1864, put down as the increased expenditure im- 
posed on the United States by the naval operations 
set on foot by his department alone.* The chair- 
man of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 
did, however, put himself on record deliberately, 
and not in the heat of debate, as estimating the 
money liability of Great Britain, because of the 

* Bulloch, vol. ii, p. 112. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 69 

issuance of the proclamation of May 13, i86r, at 
twenty-five hundred milHons of dollars ; and he 
clinched the matter by declaring that " whatever 
may be the final settlement of these great accounts, 
such must be the judgment in any chancery which 
consults the simple equity of the case." And this 
proposition the Senate of the United States now 
by formal vote approved, promulgating it to the 
world as its own. 

No one in the United States was at that time so 
familiar with the issues between the two countries, 
or so qualified to speak understandingly of them as 
Mr. Adams, from his Boston retirement then watch- 
ing the course of events with a deep and natural 
interest. On reading Mr. Sumner's speech, and 
noting the unanimity of the vote by which the Sen- 
ate had rejected the convention, he wrote, — " The 
practical effect of this is to raise the scale of our 
demands of reparation so very high that there is 
no chance of neofotiation left, unless the Enolish 
have lost all their spirit and character. The posi- 
tion in which it places Mr, Bright and our old 
friends in the struo-o-le is awkward to the last de- 
gree. Mr. Goldwin Smith, who was at the meet- 
ing of the [Massachusetts] Historical Society [which 
chanced that day to be held] spoke of it to me with 
some feeling. The whole affair is ominous of the 
chantre QroinQr on in our form of 2'overnment ; for 
this is a pronunciamento from the Senate as the 
treaty - making power. There were intimations 
made to me in conversation that the end of it all 
was to be the annexation of Canada by way of full 
indemnity. Movements were going on in that re- 
gion to accelerate the result. I suppose that event 



70 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

is inevitable at some time ; but I doubt whether it 
will come in just that form. Great Britain will not 
confess a wrong, and sell Canada as the price of a 
release from punishment. "^^ '^ * I begin to be ap- 
prehensive that the drift of this government under 
the effect of that speech will be to a misunder- 
standing ; and, not improbably, an ultimate seizure 
of Canada by way of indemnification." To the same 
effect the British Minister at Washington, Mr. Thorn- 
ton, was apprising his government that, in the Senate 
debate held in executive session, " Mr. Sumner was 
followed by a few other Senators, all speaking in 
the same sense. Mr. Chandler, Senator from 
Michigan, seeming to be most violent against Eng- 
land, indicating his desire that Great Britain should 
possess no territory on the American Continent." 

Gen. Grant was now fairly entered on his first 
presidential term, and Mr. Fish had, for some five 
weeks, been Secretary of State. So far as con- 
cerned an amicable settlement between Great Brit- 
ain and the United States the outlook was quite 
unpropitious ; less propitious in fact than at any 
previous time. The new President was a military 
man, and, in the language of Mr. Sumner, he was 
" known to feel intensely on the Alabama question." 
At the close of the war he had expressed himself in 
a way hostile to Great Britain, not caring whether 
she "paid 'our little bill' or not; upon the whole 
he would rather she should not, and that would 
leave the precedent of her conduct in full force for 
us to follow, and he wished it understood that we 
should follow it." During the war, he had been 
accustomed to regard Great Britain as " an enemy," 
and the mischief caused by her course he thought 



American Civil ]Var and War in the Transvaal. 71 

not capable of over-statement ; and, in May, 
1869, Sumner wrote that the President's views 
were in close conformity with those set forth in his 
speech, and that after its delivery Gen. Grant had 
thanked and congratulated him. Everything-, con- 
sequently, now seemed to indicate that events must 
take the course thus marked out for them. Great 
Britain would have to face the contingencies of the 
future weighted down by the policy followed by 
Palmerston and Russell, and confronted by the 
precedents of the Florida, the Alabama, and the 
ShcnaiidoaJi. She had taken her position in 1861- 
65, defiantly proclaiming that, for her, conditions 
could never be reversed, the womb of the future 
contained no day of reckoning, — no South Africa. 

Into the details of what now ensued, it is not 
necessary here to enter. They are matter of his- 
tory; and as such, sufficiently familiar. I shall pass 
rapidly over even the Motley imbroglio, coming 
directly to the difiiculty between Mr. Fish and Mr. 
Sumner, — high officials both, the one Secretary of 
State, the other chairman of the Senate Committee 
on Foreign Relations. In regard to this difficulty 
much has been written ; more said. In discussing 
it, whether by pen or word of mouth, no little tem- 
per has been displa3''ed ; but, so far as I am aware, 
its significance in an historical way has never been 
developed. As I look upon it, it was an essential 
factor, — almost a necessary preliminary to that read- 
justment of relations between the United States and 
Great Britain now so influential a factor in the in- 
ternational relations of four continents. 

The divergence between the two was almost im- 
mediate. The position of Mr. Fish, as head of the 



72 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

State Department, was, so far as Mr. Sumner was 
concerned, one of great and constantly increasing 
difficulty. The latter had then been seventeen 
years a member of the Senate, and, during eight of 
the seventeen, chairman of the Committee on For- 
eign Relations. Secretary Seward had been Mr. 
Sumner's senior in the Senate, and afterwards Sec- 
retary of State from the commencement of Sumner's 
chairmanship of his committee. Naturally, there- 
fore, though he had often been bitter in his attacks 
on the Secretary, — at times, indeed, more siio, in- 
dulging even in language which knew no limit of 
moderation, — he regarded him with very different 
eyes from those through which he cast glances of a 
somewhat downward kind on Seward's successor in 
office. In earlier senatorial days, when they sat 
together in that body during the Pierce administra- 
tion, Mr. Fish had always evinced much deference 
to Sumner's scholarly and social attributes, and had 
treated him with a consideration which the latter 
not impossibly misconstrued. The evidence is clear 
and of record that, when unexpectedly called to take 
charge of the State Department, Mr. Fish was solic- 
itous as to Sumner's feeling towards him, and anx- 
ious to assure himself of the latter's co-operation 
and even guidance. Meanwhile, though wholly un- 
conscious of the fact, Mr. Sumner could not help 
regarding Mr. Fish as a tyro, and was not disposed 
to credit him with any very clearly defined ideas of 
his own. He assumed, as matter of course, that 
at last the shaping of the foreign policy of the coun- 
try would by seniority devolve upon him. The ap- 
pointment of Mr. Motley to succeed Mr. Reverdy 
Johnson in the English mission undoubtedly con- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 73 

firmed him in this opinion. Mr. Motley was his 
appointee. That the new plenipotentiary regarded 
himself as such at once became apparent ; for, im- 
mediately after his confirmation, he prepared a me- 
moir sufTirestive of the instructions to be oiven him 
The Johnson-Clarendon convention had just been 
rejected ; the course now to be pursued was under 
advisement; Mr. Sumner's recent speech was still 
matter of oreneral discussion. The new President 
was understood to have no very clearly defined 
ideas on the subject ; it was assumed that Mr. Fish 
was equally susceptible to direction. Mr. Motley, 
therefore, looked to Mr. Sumner for inspiration. In 
his memorandum he suggested that it was not ad- 
visable at present to attempt any renewal of nego- 
tiations. And then he fell back on the proclamation 
of May, 1861 ; proceeding to dilate on that wrong 
committed by Great Britain, — a wrong so deeply 
felt by the American people ! This sense of wrong 
had now been declared gravely, solemnly, without 
passion ; and the sense of it was not to be expunged 
by a mere money payment to reimburse a few capt- 
ures and conflagrations at sea. And here, for the 
present, he proposed to let the matter rest. A time 
might come when Great Britain would see her fault, 
and be disposed to confess it. Reparation of some 
sort would then naturally follow ; but, meanwhile, 
it was not for the United States to press the matter 
further. 

Distinct indications of a divergence of opinion as 
to the course to be pursued were at once apparent. 
The President, acting as yet under the influence of 
Mr. Sumner, wished Mr. Motley to proceed forth- 
with to his post; Mr. P^ish inclined to delay his go- 



74 Before and After the Treaty of WasJtington : 

ing. Meanwhile the Secretary was at work on the 
new minister's letter of instructions ; and in them 
he clearly did not draw his inspiration from the 
Motley memoir.* On the contrary, referring to the 
fate of the Johnson-Clarendon convention in the 
Senate, he proceeded to say that, because of this 
action, the government of the United States did not 
abandon '' the hope of an early, satisfactory and 
friendly settlement of the questions depending be- 
tween the two governments." The suspension of 
negotiations, he added, would, the President hoped, 
be regarded by Her Majesty's government, as it 
was by him, "as wholly in the interest, and solely 
with a view, to an early and friendly settlement." 
The Secretary then went on to open the way to 
such a settlement by defining, in terms presently to 
be referred to, the views of the President on the 
effect to be ascribed to the Queen's proclamation 
of May, 1861. 

At this point, the reason became apparent why 
Mr. Fish was in no haste to have the newly ap- 
pointed minister proceed at once to London. The 
Secretary was in a dilemma. The rule of action he 
was about to lay down as that which should have 
guided the British government in 1861 must con- 
trol the United States in 1S69. That was obvious; 
but, in 1869, the United States was itself the in- 

* Subsequently, in September, 1877, Grant said, when at Edin- 
burgh — " Mr. Motley had to be instructed. The instructions were 
prepared very carefully, and after Governor Fish and I had gone over 
them for the last time I wrote an addendum charging him that above 
all things he should handle the subject of the Alabama claims with 
the greatest delicacy. Mr. Motley, instead of obeying his implicit 
instructions, deliberately fell in line with Sumner and thus added in- 
sult to the previous injury." 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 75 

terested observer of an insurrection in the neigh- 
boring island of Cuba ; and, moreover, the new 
President was not backward in expressing- the warm 
sympathy he felt for the insurgents against Spanish 
colonial misrule. He wished also to forward their 
cause. That wish would find natural expression in 
a recognition of belligerent rights. Gen. Grant 
was a man of decided mind ; he was very persist- 
ent ; his ways were military; and, as to principles 
of international law, his knowledge of them can 
hardly be said to have been so much limited as to- 
tally wanting. He inclined strongly to a policy of 
territorial expansion ; but his views were in the di- 
rection of the tropics, — the Antilles and Mexico, — 
rather than towards Canada and the North. As 
the event, however, showed, once his mind was 
made up and his feelings enlisted, it was not possi- 
ble to divert him from his end. In the matter of 
foreign policy, the course he now had in mind, 
though neither of the two at first realized the fact, 
involved of necessity and from the outset a struggle 
with Mr. Sumner; and, to one who knew the men, 
appreciating their characteristics and understanding 
their methods, it was easy to foresee that the strug- 
gle would be as bitter as it was prolonged and un- 
relenting. 

As different in their mental attributes as in 
their physical appearance, while Mr. Sumner was, 
intellectually, morally and physically, much the 
finer and more imposing human product, Grant had 
counterbalancing qualities which made him, in cer- 
tain fields, the more formidable opponent. With 
immense will, he was taciturn ; Sumner, on the con- 
trary, in no way deficient in will, was a man of many 



76 Before and After tJie Treaty of Wasliingto7i : 

words, — a rhetorician. In action and among men, 
Grant's self-control was perfect, — amounting to 
complete apparent imperturbability. Unassuming, 
singularly devoid of selfconsciousness, in presence 
of an emergency his blood never seemed to quicken, 
his face became only the more set, tenacity personi- 
fied ; whereas Sumner, — when morally excited, the 
rush of his words, his deep tremulous utterance and 
the light in his eye, did not impart conviction or in- 
spire respect. Doubts would suggest themselves to 
the unsympathetic, or only partially sympathetic, 
listener whether the man was of altogether balanced 
mind. At such times, Mr. Sumner did not appreciate 
the force of language, or, indeed, know what he said ; 
and, quite unconsciously on his part, he assumed an 
attitude of moral superiority and intellectual certainty, 
in no way compatible with a proper appreciation of 
the equality of others. In the mind of a man like 
Grant, these peculiarities excited obstinacy, anger 
and contempt. Thus, an agitator and exponent of 
ideas, Mr. Sumner might and did stimulate masses, 
but he was never, man or boy, a leader among 
equals. Moreover, as one of his truest friends and 
warmest admirers said of him, he was prone to re- 
gard difference of opinion as a moral delinquency."^' 
Grant, on the contrary, not retentive of enmities, re- 
gardless of consistency, and of coarse moral as well 
as physical fibre, moved towards his ends with a 
stubborn persistency which carried others along 
with him, and against which a perfervid, rhetorical 
opposition was apt to prove unavailing. 

* " A man who did not believe there was another side to the question, 
who would treat difference of opinion almost as moral delinquency." 
Geo. William Curtis, in his oration on Charles Sumner ; Orations 
and Addresses, vol. iii, p. 230. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. JJ 

Mr. Fish stood between the two. So far as ques- 
tions of foreign pohcy and problems of international 
law were concerned, though, as the result unmis- 
takably showed, well grounded in fundamental prin- 
ciples and with a grasp of general conditions at 
once firm and correct, there is no evidence that, be- 
fore his quite unexpected summons to the Depart- 
ment of State, the new Secretary had felt called 
upon to form definite conclusions. By nature cau- 
tious and conservative, not an imaginative man, 
having passed his whole life in a New York social 
and commercial environment, he would have in- 
clined to proceed slowly in any path of expansion, 
most of all in one heading towards the tropics, and 
an admixture of half-breeds. So far as Great Brit- 
ain was concerned, he would, on the other hand, be 
disposed to effect, if he could, an amicable, business- 
like settlement on rational terms. From the begin- 
ning he was inclined to think Mr. Sumner had in his 
speech gone too far, — that the positions he had 
taken were not altogether tenable. The British 
proclamation of May, i86r, he regarded as a 
" grievous wrong " under all the circumstances of 
the case, but he assented to the position of Lord 
Stanley that issuing it was within the strict right 
of the neutral, and the question of time was one of 
judgment. As he wrote to a friend in May, 1869, 
four weeks after Mr. Sumner had enunciated very 
different views in his Senate speech, the proclama- 
tion could be made subject of complaint only as 
leading in its execution and enforcement to the fit- 
ting out of t\\Q A/adajua, &c., and the moral sup- 
port given in England to the rebel cause. " Sum- 
ner's speech was able and eloquent, and perhaps 



78 Before and After the Treaty of IVashingtoN : 

not without a good effect. ^•^' '^' * Although the 
only speech made in the debate, it was not the ar- 
gument of all who agreed in the rejection of the 
treaty, and we cannot stand upon it in all its points." 
Within a week of the rejection of the Johnson- 
Clarendon convention he wrote to another friend, 
" Whenever negotiations are resumed, the atmos- 
phere and the surroundings of this side of the water 
are more favorable to a proper solution of the ques- 
tion than the dinner-tables and the public banquet- 
ting-s of Enoland." 

Thus from the very commencement there was an 
essential divergence of view between the Secretary 
of State and the Senator from Massachusetts, as 
well as between the latter and the President. As 
between Charles Sumner and Ulysses S. Grant, past 
friendly relations, similar social connections and 
common tastes would decidedly have drawn Mr. 
Fish towards the former ; but, by nature loyal, he 
was distinctly repelled by Mr. Sumner's demeanor. 

I have dwelt on these personal factors, and di- 
vergences of view and aim, for they must be kept 
constantly in mind in considering what was now to 
occur. They account for much otherwise quite inex- 
plicable. In history as a whole, — the inexhaustible 
story of man's development from what he once was 
to what he now is, — the individual as a factor is so 
far minimized that the most considerable unit might 
probably have been left out of the account, and yet 
the result be in no material respect other than it is. 
Exceptional forces and individual traits counterbal- 
ance each other, tending always to average results. 
But with episodes it is not so. In them the individ- 
ual has free play ; and, accordingly, the personal 



American Civil War and JVar in the Transvaal. 79 

factor counts. The Treaty of Washington was an 
episode. In deahng with the conditions which led 
up to that treaty the minds of Charles Sumner and 
Hamilton Fish naturally moved on different lines ; 
while it so chanced that the likes and dislikes, the 
objectives, surroundings and methods of Ulysses S. 
Grant, — disturbing factors, — entered largely into 
the result. 



IV 

In the )'ears 1869 and 1870, as indeed through- 
out his public life, Charles Sumner was intent on 
the African, and questions of human right ; while, 
in the matter of territorial expansion, looking 
vaguely to Canada and a Greater American policy, he 
would instinctively have been opposed to any move- 
ment in the direction of the tropics. President 
Grant, on the contrary, from the beoinnino- of his 
first presidential term, was bent on early acquisi- 
tions in the West Indies, and disposed to adopt a 
summary tone towards Spain. As respects Great 
Britain, his attitude, one of comparative indifference, 
admitted of almost indefinite shaping. Mr. Fish, 
new, and not comfortable, in his unsolicited posi- 
tion, was inclined to be influenced, — almost to be 
led, by Sumner ; but he at the same time looked to 
Grant as the head of the government, in which he 
himself held the place of precedence, and was dis- 
posed to give to his chief a thoroughly loyal sup- 
port. New in their positions, and new to each other, 
they were all about to find their bearings. Under 
such circumstances, a stranger in the State Depart- 
ment and almost a novice on questions of interna- 



8o Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

tional law, the new Secretary seems in some degree 
to have turned to Caleb Cushing ; nor could he 
amongf rnen then available at Washinorton have 
found a more competent or tactful adviser. Of de- 
cided parts, with good attainments and remarkable 
powers of acquisition, Caleb Cushing- was a man of 
large experience, much human insight, and, while 
given to manipulation, he was not hampered either 
in council or in action by any excess of moral sensi- 
bility. He understood the situation ; and he under- 
stood Mr. Sumner. 

In the matter of the Queen's proclamation of 
May, 1861, and the concession of belligerent rights, 
it was thus a case of alternatives, — the rule of Brit- 
ish accountability to be laid down for the new ad- 
ministration must not stand in the way of a more 
than possible line of aggressive action towards 
Spain. That the instructions now prepared for 
Mr. Motley were more rational than the positions 
assumed by Mr. Sumner four weeks before must be 
admitted ; they were also more in accordance with 
recognized principles of international law. In his 
Senate speech Mr. Sumner had contended that, be- 
cause of the proclamation, the liability of Great Britain 
must be fixed at amounts scarcely calculable in 
money, — a damage "immense and infinite, — " a mas- 
sive grievance," all dependent on " this extraordinary 
manifesto," the " ill-omened," the " fatal " proclama- 
tion which "had opened the floodgates to infinite 
woes." Mr. Fish, with the Cuba situation obviously 
in mind, declared, on the contrary, that the President 
recognized " the right of every power, when a civil 
conflict has arisen in another state, and has attained a 
sufficient complexity, magnitude and completeness. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 8i 

to define its own relations and those of its citizens 
and subjects toward the parties to the conflict, so far 
as their rights and interests are necessarily affected 
by the conflict." Then followed some saving clauses, 
carefully framed ; but, as already foreshadowed in 
Mr. Fish's correspondence, the precipitate character 
of the "unfriendly" proclamation was dwelt upon 
only as showing " the beginning and the animus of 
that course of conduct which resulted so disastrously 
to the United States." In the original draft, these 
instructions had been even more explicit on this 
point; and, for that reason, had led to a charac- 
teristic remonstrance on the part of Mr. Sumner. 
Having early got some inkling of their character he 
at once went to the State Department, and there, 
speaking to the Assistant Secretary in a loud voice, 
tremulous and vibrating with excitement, he had 
exclaimed— " Is it the purpose of this Administra- 
tion to sacrifice me, — me a Senator from Massachu- 
setts ? " — and later he wrote to the Secretary himself 
declaring his dissent "from the course proposed," 
on the ground that " as chairman of the Senate 
Committee I ought not in any way to be a party to 
a statement which abandons or enfeebles any of the 
just grounds of my country as already expounded 
by Seward, Adams, and myself" To this more 
than merely implied threat, Mr. Fish had contented 
himself by replying that whether the modifications 
were of greater or of less significance, they could 
" hardly be of sufficient importance to break up an 
effort at negotiation, or lo break down an Admin- 
istrationy Mr. Gushing here intervened, and his 
skilful hand temporarily adjusted the difficulty. The 
adjustment was, however, only temporary. The 



82 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

inevitable could not be averted. Coming events 
already cast their shadow before. 

To revive in detail the painful Motley imbroglio 
of 1870 is not necessary for present purposes. Suf- 
fice it to say that, when he reached England, Mr. 
Motley was, apparently, quite unable to clear his 
mind of what might, perhaps, not inaptly be de- 
scribed as the Proclamation Legend ; and, both in 
his official interviews with the British Foreign Sec- 
retary and in social talk, he failed to follow, and ap- 
parently did not grasp, the spirit of his instructions. 
Confessing to a "despondent feeling" as to the 
"possibility of the two nations ever understanding 
each other or looking into each other's hearts," in 
his first interview with Lord Clarendon he fell heavily 
back on the ubiquitous and everlasting proclamation, 
as the " fountain head of the disasters which had been 
caused to the American people, both individually 
and collectively." Historically untrue and diplo- 
matically injudicious, this tone and stand evinced, on 
the part of Mr. Modey, an inability to see things 
in connection with his mission otherwise than as 
seen by Mr. Sumner. His misapprehension of 
the objects his official superior had in view was 
obvious and complete. As it was almost imme- 
diately decided that, so far as the settlement of out- 
standing difficulties between the two nations was 
concerned, any future negotiations should be con- 
ducted in Washington, Mr. Motley ceased at this 
point to be a considerable factor in the course of 
events. 

In the mean time an extremely adroit, though 
unofficial, intermediary had appeared on the stage. 
His presence almost immediately made itself felt. 



Ainericati Civil War and IVar in the Transvaal. 83 

Born in Scotland in 1820, and emigrating with his 
parents to America at the age of sixteen, Sir John 
Rose, or Mr. Rose as he still was in 1869, had been 
for a number of years prominent in Canadian public 
life. A natural diplomat of a high order, he was at 
this time acting as British commissioner on the 
joint tribunal provided by the treaty of 1863 to ar- 
bitrate the claims of the Hudson's Bay and Puget 
Sound Companies. Mr, Caleb Cushing was of 
counsel in that business, and relations of a friendly 
nature grew up between him and the British arbi- 
trator. Whether already privately authorized so to 
do or not, Mr. Rose, who was very solicitous of an 
arrangement between the two nations, skilfully in- 
stilled into Mr. Cushing a belief that he, Mr. Rose, 
might be of use in the delicate work of reopening 
negotiations on new lines. Accordingly on the 
26th of June, — only eight weeks after the rejection 
of the Johnson-Clarendon convention, and sixteen 
days after Mr. Motley's despondent interview with 
Lord Clarendon just referred to, — Mr. Cushing, 
then in Washington, wrote to Mr. Rose, in Ottawa. 
Referring to previous letters between them, he now 
told him that he had that day seen Secretary Fish, 
and had arranged for Mr. Rose to meet him. " I 
am," he wrote, " not sanguine of immediate conclu- 
sion of such a treaty as either you or I might de- 
sire. But I think the time has arrived to commencey 
trusting that discretion, patience and good will on 
both sides may eventuate, in this important matter, 
satisfactorily to the two governments." * Accord- 

* In this letter Mr. Cushing significantly went on to say — " In view 
of the disposition which the Senate of the United States has recently 
shown to assume more than its due, or at least than its usual part, 



84 Before and Afte?' the Treaty of Washington : - 

ingly, on the 8th of July, Mr. Rose called on the 
Secretary in Washington. The first of the inter- 
views which led up to the Treaty of Washington 
two years later took place next day at Mr. Fish's 
dinner table. The basis of a settlement was then 
discussed, and that subsequently reached outlined 
by Mr. Fish, who laid especial emphasis on the 
necessity of " some kind expression of regret " on 
the part of Great Britain over the course pursued 
in the Civil War. The two even went so far as to 
consider the details of negotiation. The expedi- 
ency of a special commission to dispose of the mat- 
ter^was discussed, and the names of the Duke of 
Argyll and John Bright were considered in connec- 
tion therewith. 

Immediately after this interview Mr. Rose went to 
England. His own official and personal relations 
with men high in influence were close ; and, more- 
over, another personage of rapidly growing con- 
sequence in English ministerial circles was now at 
work laboring earnestly and assiduously to promote 
an adjustment. In 1869 William E. Forster was 
fast rising into the first rank among English public 
men. President of the Privy Council in Mr. Glad- 
stone's first ministry, he was at this juncture acting 
as Minister of Education. Nine years later, in the 
second Gladstone ministry, he was to occupy the 
crucial position of Secretary for Ireland. Always, 
from his first entrance into public life in 1861, an 

in the determination of international questions, you will appreciate 
the unreadiness of the Executive, at the present time, to take upon 
itself any spontaneous or doubtful ventures, especially on the side 
of England." The reference was, of course, to Mr. Sumner, and 
pointed to an already developing source of trouble. Grant's first 
presidential term was yet in its fourth month only. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 85 

earnest, outspoken, consistent and insistent friend 
of democratic United States, — during the Civil 
War the one in that small group of friends held by 
Mr. Adams in "most esteem," — Mr. Forster was 
now strenous in his advocacy of a broad settlement 
of the issues arising out of the Rebellion, and the 
honest admission by Great Britain of the ill-con- 
sidered policy then pursued. His name also had 
been discussed by Mr. Fish and Mr. Rose as one of 
the proposed special mission. 

Within less than two months, therefore, of the 
rejection of the Johnson-Clarendon convention, the 
Treaty of Washington was in the air ; and, curiously 
enough, at the very time Mr. Motley in London 
was confessing to Lord Clarendon his " despondent 
feeling" in view of the " path surrounded by per- 
ils," and talking of "grave and disastrous misun- 
derstandings and cruel wars," Secretary Fish and 
Mr. Rose, comfortably seated at a dinner table in 
Washington, were quietly paving the way to a 
complete understanding. Nothing more occurred 
during that summer; but in the course of jt Mr. 
Fish thus expressed his views in a letter to a cor- 
respondent, — an expression at this early date to 
which subsequent events lent much significance : — 
"The two English-speaking progressive liberal 
Governments of the world should not, must not, be 
divided — better let this question rest for some 
years even (if that be necessary) than risk failure 
in another attempt at settlement. I do not say this 
because I wish to postpone a settlement — on the 
contrary, I should esteem it the greatest glory, and 
greatest happiness of my life, if it could be settled 
while I remain in official position ; and I should 



86 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

esteem it the greatest benefit to my country to 
bring it to an early settlement. * * * j want 
to have the question settled. I would not, if I could, 
impose any humiliating condition on Great Britain. 
I would not be a party to anything that proposes 
to ' threaten ' her. I believe that she is o-reat 
enough to be just ; and I trust that she is wise 
enouo^h to maintain her own o^reatness. No cfreat- 
ness is inconsistent with some errors. Mr. Bright 
thinks she was drawn into errors — so do we. If 
she can be brought to think so, it will not be neces- 
sary for her to say so ; — at least not to say it very 
loudly. It may be said by a definition of what shall 
be Maritime International Law in the future, and a 
few kind words. She will want in the future what 
we have claimed. Thus she will be benefited — 
we satisfied." Written in the early days of Sep- 
tember, 1870, this letter set forth clearly the posi- 
tion of Mr. Fish ; it also correctly foreshadowed the 
course of the diplomacy which had already been 
entered upon. 

During the autumn of 1869 the Alabama claims, 
and the unsatisfactory relations of the country with 
Great Britain, were discussed at more than one 
Cabinet meeting in Washington. At this time, 
while the Secretary of State professed himself as 
ready to negotiate whenever England came forward 
with a fairly satisfactory proposition, the President 
favored a policy of delay. Presently, Mr. Rose was 
again heard from. The letter he now wrote has since 
often been referred to and much commented upon, 
though it was over twenty years before its author- 
ship was revealed. In it he said, — " I have had 
conversations in more than one quarter, — which 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 87 

you will readily understand without my naming 
them, and have conveyed 7ny own belief, that a 
kindly word, or an expression of regret, such as 
would not involve an acknowledgment of wrong, 
was likely to be more potential than the most irre- 
fragable reasoning on principles of international 
law." Mr. Rose then went on to touch upon a 
very delicate topic, — Mr. Motley's general London 
presentation of his country's attitude. " Is your 
representative here," he added, " a gentleman ot 
the most conciliatory spirit.'* * * * Does he not 
— perhaps naturall)^ — let the fear of imitating his 
predecessor influence his course so as to make his 
initiative hardly as much characterized by consider- 
ation for the sensibilities of the people of tJiis coun- 
try, as of his own. -^ * * I think I understood 
you to say, that you thought negotiations would 
be more like to be attended with satisfactory re- 
sults, if they were transferred to, and were con- 
cluded at, Washington ; because you could from 
time to time communicate confidentially with lead- 
ing Senators, and know how far you could carry 
that body with you. -^^ * * But again is your 
representative of that mind ? — and how is it to be 
brought about? By a new, or a special envoy— as 
you spoke of or quietly through Mr. Thornton ? 
* * * If I am right in my impression that you 
would prefer Washington and a new man, and you 
think it worth while to enable me to repeat that 
suggestion as one from myself in the proper quarter, 
a line from you — -or if you prefer it, a word by the 
cable, will enable me to do so." 

Eight days later, on the iith of the same month, 
Mr. Rose again wrote to Mr. Fish, calling his at- 



88 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

tention to the speech of Mr. Gladstone at the Guild- 
hall, which, he said, "hardly conveys the impres- 
sion his tone conveyed with reference to United 
States affairs. There was an earnest tone of friend- 
ship that is hardly reproduced." 

At the time these letters reached Mr. Fish the 
relations between him and Mr. Sumner were close 
and still friendly. The Secretary spoke to the 
Senator freely of Mr. Rose's visits, and consulted 
with him over every step taken. Knowing that 
Mr. Sumner and Mr. Motley were constantly inter- 
changing letters, he took occasion to advise Mr. 
Sumner of the intimations which had thus reached 
him, giving, of course, no names, but saying simply 
that they were from a reliable quarter. The well- 
meant hint was more than disregarded, Mr. Sumner 
contenting himself with contemptuous references to 
the once celebrated McCracken episode. Years 
afterwards, in the same spirit, Mr. Motley's biog- 
rapher sneeringly referred to the still unnamed 
writer of the Rose letters as "a faithless friend, a 
disguised enemy, a secret emissary or an injudicious 
alarmist." * 

The reply of Mr. Fish to the letters of Mr. Rose 
revealed the difficulties of the Secretary's position. 
The individuality of Mr. Sumner made itself felt at 
every point. In London, Mr. Motley reflected the 
views of the chairman of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Affairs rather than those of the Secretary 
of State ; in Washington, the personal relations of 
Mr. Sumner with the British Minister were such as 
to render the latter undesirable at least as a me- 

* O. W. Holmes, Memoir of Joint Lothrop Motley {1879), pp. 
178-9. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 89 

dium of negotiation. Referring first to his intima- 
tions concerning Mr. Motley, Mr. Fish replied to 
Mr. Rose as follows : — 

" Your questions respecting our Minister, I fear 
may have been justified by some indiscretion of ex- 
pression, or of manner, but I hope only indiscre- 
tions of that nature. Intimations of such had 
reached me. I have reason to hope that if there 
have been such manifestations they may not recur. 
Whatever there may have appeared, I cannot doubt 
his desire to aid in bringing the two Governments 
into perfect accord. * * * j have the highest 
regard for Mr. Thornton, and find him in all my in- 
tercourse, courteous, frank, and true. A gentle- 
man with whom I deal and treat with the most un- 
reserved confidence. He had, however, given 
offence to Mr. Sumner (chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations), whose position 
with reference to any future negotiation you un- 
derstand. I chance to know that Mr. Sumner feels 
deeply aggrieved by some things which Mr. Thorn- 
ton has written home, and although he would not 
consciously allow a personal grief of that nature to 
prejudice his action in an official intercourse with 
the representative of a State, he might uncon- 
sciously be led to criticism unfavorable to positions 
which would be viewed differently, if occupied by 
some other person. * * * I am very decidedly 
of opinion that whenever negotiations are to be re- 
newed, they would be more likely to result favor- 
ably here than in London. I have so instructed 
Mr. Motley to say, if he be questioned on the sub- 
ject. 

Such was the posture of affairs at the close of the 



90 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

year 1869. Events now moved rapidly, and the 
general situation became more and more compli- 
cated. In Europe, the war-clouds which preceded 
the Franco-Prussian storm-burst of 1870 were 
gathering ; in America, President Grant was, per- 
sistently as earnestly, pressing his schemes of West 
Indian annexation. In London, Mr. Rose was in- 
formally sounding the members of the government 
to ascertain how far they were willing to go ; in 
Washington, Mr. Thornton was pressing the Sec- 
retary " with much earnestness to give him an inti- 
mation of what would be accepted " by the United 
States. The outbreak of hostilities between France 
and Germany six months later brought matters, so 
far as Great Britain was concerned, fairly to a crisis. 
In presence of serious continental complications, — 
in imminent danger of being drawn into the vortex 
of conflict, — Great Britain found itself face to face 
with the Alabatna precedents. Like " blood-bol- 
ter'd " Banquo, they would not down. The posi- 
tion was one not likely to escape the keen eye of 
Prince Bismarck. EnQ^land's hands were tied. In- 
ternationally, she was obviously a negligible quan- 
tity. The principles laid down and precedents es- 
tablished only six years before were patent, — fresh 
in the minds of all. Her Majesty's government 
remembered them ; Prince Bismarck was advised 
of them ; each was well aware of the other's knowl- 
edge. The Gladstone ministry were accordingly 
in an extraordinarily receptive mental condition. 

Such being the state of affairs in Europe, on this 
side of the Atlantic the situation complicated itself 
no less rapidly. It was in the early days of Janu- 
ary that President Grant dropped in one evening 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 91 

at Mr. Sumner's house, while the latter was at din- 
ner with some friends, and sought to enlist the in- 
fluence of the chairman of the " Senate Judiciary 
Committee," as he would designate him, in support 
of the scheme for the annexation of San Domingo. 
What followed is familiar history. During the 
immediately ensuing nionths there took place a 
complete division between the two men. They 
thereafter became not only politically opposed, but 
bitter personal enemies. 

To all outward appearances during those months 
no advance whatever was beinor made towards a 
British adjustment ; but, in point of fact, both time 
and conditions were now ripe for it. In the early 
days of September, 1870, the Imperial government 
of France collapsed at Sedan; and on the 13th of 
that month M. Thiers arrived in London soliciting 
on behalf of the new French republic the aid and 
good offices of Great Britain. His mission was, of 
course, fruitless ; but, none the less, it could not 
but emphasize the difficulty of England s position. 
If it failed so to do, a forcible reminder from Amer- 
ica was imminent, and followed almost immediately. 
In December, with Paris blockaded by the Prus- 
sians, France was brought face to face with dismem- 
berment. The general European situation was 
from an English point of view disquieting in the 
extreme. At just this juncture, within one week 
of the day on which his Parliament called on the 
Prussian King to become Emperor of Germany, 
and the delegate government, to avoid a German 
army operating in the heart of France, removed its 
sittings from Tours to Bordeaux, — at just this 
juncture (December 5th) President Grant took oc- 



92 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

casion to incorporate the following passage into his 
annual message : — ■ 

" I regret to say that no conclusion has been 
reached for the adjustment of the claims against 
Great Britain growing out of the course adopted 
by that Government during the rebellion. The 
cabinet of London, so far as its views have been 
expressed, does not appear to be willing to concede 
that Her Majesty's Government was guilty of any 
negligence, or did or permitted any act during the 
war by which the United States has just cause of 
complaint. Our firm and unalterable convictions 
are directly the reverse. I therefore recommend 
to Congress to authorize the appointment of a com- 
mission to take proof of the amount and the owner- 
ship of these several claims, on notice to the repre- 
sentative of Her Majesty at Washington, and that 
authority be given for the settlement of these claims 
by the United States, so that the Government shall 
have the ownership of the private claims, as well as 
the responsible control of all the demands against 
Great Britain. It can not be necessary to add that 
whenever Her Majesty's Government shall enter- 
tain a desire for a full and friendly adjustment of 
these claims the United States will enter upon their 
consideration with an earnest desire for a conclusion 
consistent with the honor and dignity of both na- 
tions." 

The hint thus forcibly given was not lost in Lon- 
dcfn. The educational process was now complete. 
The message, or that portion of it which most in- 
terested the British public, appeared in the London 
journals of December 6th, and was widely com- 
mented upon. Exacdy five weeks later, on the 9th 



Auierican Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 93 

of January, 187 i, Mr. Rose was again in Washing- 
ton. Coming ostensibly on business relating to the 
Dominion of Canada, he was in reality now at last 
empowered to open negotiations looking to an im- 
mediate settlement. The very evening of the day 
he arrived Mr. Rose dined with Mr. Fish. The 
after-dinner talk between the two, lasting some five 
or six hours, resulted in a confidential memoran- 
dum. More carefully formulated by Mr. Rose the 
following day, this paper reached Mr. Fish on the 
nth of January. He expressed himself," on ac- 
knowledging its receipt, as inspired with hope. 

Hamilton Fish was neither an ambitious nor an 
imaginative man. Though he held the position of 
Secretary of State during both of the Grant admin- 
istrations, he did so with a genuine and well-under- 
stood reluctance, and was always contemplating 
an early retirement. At this juncture, however, 
there can be no doubt his ambition was fired. 
That which a year before he had pronounced as, 
among things possible, " the greatest glory and 
the greatest happiness of his life " was within his 
reach. He was to be the official medium throuo^h 
which a settlement of the questions between "the 
two English-speaking, progressive-liberal " coun- 
tries was to be effected. That was to be his mon- 
ument. To a certain extent, also, conditions fa- 
vored him. Mr. Sumner and his Senate speech 
on the Johnson-Clarendon convention were the 
great obstacles in the way. For, as Mr. Fish had 
himself expressed it a year previous, — " The elo- 
quence, and the display of learning and of research 
in [that] speech, and, — perhaps above all, — the 
gratification of the laudable pride of a people in be- 



94 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

in o- told of the maenitude of wealth in reserve for 
them in the way of damages due from a wealthy 
debtor, captivated some, and deluded more." Of 
this wide-spread popular feeling, reinforced by the 
anti-British and Fenian sentiment then very preva- 
lent, account had to be taken. But, on the other 
hand, Mr. Sumner's lukewarmness as respects any 
settlement at that time, much more his possible op- 
position to one originating with the State Depart- 
ment, indirectly forwarded that result. The Presi- 
dent and the Massachusetts Senator were now in 
open conflict over the formers policy of West Ind- 
ian expansion ; and in that struggle Secretary Fish 
had most properly, if he remained in office, taken 
sides with his official head. The Motley imbroglio 
had followed. With the most friendly feeling towards 
Mr. Motley personally, and sincerely desirous of 
avoiding so far as possible any difficulty with Mr. 
Sumner, Mr. Fish's expressed wish was to continue 
Mr. Motley in his position, taking from him all part 
in the proposed negotiation and giving him implicit 
instructions in no way to refer to it, or seek to in- 
fluence it. He was practically to be reduced to a 
functional representative. To this the President 
would not assent. He insisted that Mr, Motley 
represented Mr. Sumner more than he did the Ad- 
ministration, and he declared in a Cabinet meeting, 
at which the matter was discussed, that he would 
" not allow Sumner to ride oVer " him. The Sec- 
retary continued to plead and urge, but in vain. 
The President was implacable. It was then sug- 
gested that Mr. Sumner should himself be nomi- 
nated to succeed Motley, and Gen. Butler and Mr. 
Cameron called on the Secretary to advocate this 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal, 95 

solution of the difficulty. They pronounced Sum- 
ner impractical and arrogant, and urged that he 
should be got out of the way by any practicable 
method. This suggestion also was discussed at a 
Cabinet meeting, and the President expressed a 
willingness to make the nomination on condition 
that Sumner would resign from the Senate ; but 
he also intimated a grim determination to remove 
him from his new office as soon as he had been 
confirmed in it. At last Mr. Fish was compelled to 
yield ; and, under the President's implicit direction, 
he wrote to Mr. Motley a private letter, couched in 
the most friendly language, in which he intimated 
as clearly as he could that so doing was most pain- 
ful to him, but he must ask for a resignation. The 
whole transaction has since been exhaustively dis- 
cussed, and it is unnecessary to revive it. It is 
sufficient to say that what was then done, was done 
by Gen. Grant's imperative order, and solely be- 
cause of Mr. Motley's intimate personal relations 
with Mr. Sumner, and the latter's opposition to the 
President's Dominican policy. The urgent and re- 
peated remonstrances, of the Secretary of State 
were of no avail. A victim of political mischance, 
Mr. Motley was thus doomed to illustrate the truth 
of Hamlet's remark as to the danger incurred by 
him of lesser weig-ht who chances 

" Between the pass and fell incensed points 
Of mighty opposites." 

It may be said, however, that, in view of the close 
personal relations existing between Mr. Sumner 
and Mr. Motley, and their constant interchange of 
letters of the most confidential character, it is not 



96 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

easy to see how the latter could have been allowed 
to remain at London, the supposed representative 
of the government, with the Massachusetts Senator 
in open opposition to the Administration. In view 
of the renewal of active negotiations, the estrange- 
ment of the one apparently necessitated the dis- 
placement of the other. 

The anger of the President towards the Massa- 
chusetts Senator now knew no bounds ; for those 
about the White House, holding there confidential 
relations, openly asserted that Mr. Sumner had 
more than intimated that that he. Grant, was intox- 
icated when, early in January, 1870, he had made 
his memorable after-dinner call at his, the Senator's, 
house. Mr. Motley refused to resign. His re- 
moval was thereupon ordered. This was delayed 
as long as possible by Mr. Fish, as he expected 
then himself shortly to retire, and was more than 
willing to leave the final act of displacement to his 
successor. At the last moment he was, however, 
prevailed upon to continue in office, sorely against 
his own wishes; and, what then, as respects the 
Enorlish mission, occurred, is matter of record. 
That the patience of the Secretary had been sorely 
tried durinof the interveninof time, does not admit of 
question. To this subject, and the probable cause 
of his irritation, I shall have occasion to refer pres- 
ently. Unfortunately, as is apt to be the case with 
those of Netherlandish blood, though slow to wrath, 
Mr. Fish's anger, once aroused, was neither easily 
appeased nor kept within conventional bounds; and 
now it extended beyond its immediate cause. He 
felt aggrieved over the course pursued by Mr. Mot- 
ley. In it he saw no regard for the difficulties of 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 97 

the position in which he himself stood, and he was 
especially provoked by the minister's voluminous 
record of the circumstances attending- his displace- 
ment, placed by him on the files of the Department, 
and entitled "End of Mission." Accordingly, Mr. 
Fish's long-contained anger found expression in 
the well-known letter, addressed to Mr. Moran, 
secretary of the Legation at London, and then act- 
ing as chargd dcs affaires. This letter, in a first 
draught, was read by the Secretary to the Presi- 
dent, Vice-President Colfax, and Mr. Conkling be- 
fore it was despatched; and, while the last named 
gave to it his approval, the President not only de- 
clined to allow certain alterations suggested by Mr. 
Colfax to be made, but expressed his wish that not 
a word in the paper be changed. 

Immaterial as all this may at first seem, it had a 
close and important bearing on the negotiations pre- 
liminary to the Treaty of Washington, now fairly 
initiated. The cabinet had, during the summer of 
1870, been divided over the Dominican issue. The 
Attorney-General, E. R. Hoar, had opposed the 
ratification of the treaty, and the President there- 
upon, and for that reason, called for his resigna- 
tion. In advising the Secretary of State of this 
fact, Gen. Grant took occasion to express his sense 
of the support Mr, Fish had given the measure, and 
to intimate his sense of obligation therefor. He 
probably felt this the more, as he was not un- 
aware that Mr. Fish had taken the course he did 
solely from a sense of loyalty, and in opposition 
to his own better judgment. Mr. Fish looked upon 
the treaty as a measure of policy inaugurated by 
the head of the Administration; and, after the pol- 



98 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

icy involved was fairly entered upon, did what he 
properly could to forward it. This, also, notwith- 
standing the fact that the treaty had been most irregu- 
larly negotiated in derogation of the Department of 
State, and that it was in charge of persons whose 
standinghadin no degree increased public confidence. 
But such loyalty of action appealed strongly to Gen- 
eral Grant, and, in return for it, he stood ready to 
approve any policy towards Great Britain the Secre- 
tary might see fit to recommend. If, moreover, such 
a policy implied of necessity a conflict with Mr. Sum- 
ner, it would, for that very reason, be only the more 
acceptable. The President thus became a tower 
of strength in the proposed negotiation. 

Still while, on the whole, the conditions contrib- 
uting to success seemed to predominate, the fate of 
the Johnson-Clarendon convention had to be borne 
in mind. Mr. Sumner was chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations. To defeat the 
result of a negotiation, it was necessary to control 
but a third of the Senate ; and his influence in that 
body had recently been emphasized by the rejection 
of the Dominican treaty, in favor of which the Pres- 
ident had made use of every form of argument and 
inducement within the power of an Executive to 
employ. So, after the proposal of Sir John Rose 
had been discussed by the Secretary with Senator 
Conkling and Gen. Schenck, the newly designated 
minister to England, it was agreed that Mr. Fish 
should seek an interview with the Massachusetts 
Senator, and, by a great show of consideration, see 
if he could not be induced to look favorably on the 
scheme. 

What ensued was not only historically interest- 



American Civil War and War in tJic Transvaal. 99 

ing, but to the last degree characteristic; it was, 
moreover, aUogether unprecedented. The Secre- 
tary of State actually sounded the way to an inter- 
view with the chairman of a Senate Committee 
through another member of that committee, — a spe- 
cies of " mutual friend," — the interview in question 
to take place, not at the Department of State, but 
at the house of the autocratic chairman. The meet- 
ing was arranged accordingly ; and, on the evening 
of the 15th of January, four days only after Sir John 
Rose's arrival in Washington, Mr. Fish, with Sir 
John's confidential memorandum in his pocket, 
stood at Mr. Sumner's door. In the meeting that 
ensued the business in hand was discussed. When 
the Secretary took his leave, the memorandum o^ 
Sir John Rose was at his request left with Mr. Sum- 
ner, who promised, after fuller consideration, shortly 
to return it. 

Then in due time followed one of the most curi- 
ous incidents in diplomatic history, an incident than 
which few could more strikingly illustrate the 
changes which in a comparatively short space of 
time take place in public opinion, and the estimate 
in which things are held. Two days later, on the 
17th of January, the Rose memorandum was re- 
turned to Secretary Fish by Senator Sumner with 
a brief note embodying this, to those of the present 
time, fairly astounding proposition : — 

" First. — The idea of Sir John Rose is that all 
questions and causes of irritation between England 
and the United States should be removed abso- 
lutely and forever, that we may be at peace really, 
and good neighbors, and to this end all points of 
difference should be considered together. Nothing 

L.ofC. 



lOO Before and After the Treaty of Washingto7i : 

could be better than this initial idea. It should be 
the starting-point. 

" Second. — The greatest trouble, if not peril, be- 
ing a constant source of anxiety and disturbance, is 
from Fenianism, which is excited by the British flag 
in Canada. Therefore the withdrawal of the Brit- 
ish flag cannot be abandoned as a condition or pre- 
liminary of such a settlement as is now proposed. 
To make the settlement complete, the withdrawal 
should be from this hemisphere, including provinces 
and islands." 

V 

Since his death, nearly thirty years ago, Charles 
Sumner has been made the subject of one of the 
most elaborate biographies in the language. Pa- 
tient and painstaking to the last degree, nothing 
seems to have escaped the notice of Mr. Pierce, and 
the one conspicuous fault of his work is its extreme 
length. It is conceived and executed on a scale 
which assumes in the reader an interest in the sub- 
ject, and an indifference to toil, commensurate with 
those of the author. The official biography of Lin- 
coln by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay is not inaptly 
called by them " A History " ; and its ten solid vol- 
umes, averaging over 450 pages each, defy perusal. 
Life simply does not suffice for literature laid out on 
such a Brobdingnagian scale; all sense of propor- 
tion is absent from it. Yet the ten volumes of 
the Lincoln include but a quarter part more read- 
ing matter than Mr. Pierce's four. On a rough 
estimate, it is computed that these fourteen volumes 
contain some two million words. The most re- 



American Civil War and War in the Tra)isvaaL lOi 

markable and highly characteristic memorandum 
just quoted is expressed in about 220 words ; and 
yet for it Mr. Pierce found no space in his four mas- 
sive volumes. He refers to it indeed, showing that 
he was aware of its existence ; but he does so 
briefly, and somewhat lightly ; treating it as a mat- 
ter of small moment, and no significance.* Mr. 
Storey, in his smaller biography of Sumner, makes 
no reference at all to it ; apparently it failed to at- 
tract his notice. And yet, that memorandum is of 
much historical significance. A species of electric 
flash, it reveals what then was, and long had been, 
in Sumner's mind. It makes intelligible what 
would otherwise remain well-nigh incomprehensi- 
ble ; if, indeed, not altogether so. 

To those of this generation, — especially to us with 
the war in South Africa going on before our eyes, 
— it would seem as if the first perusal of that memo- 
randum of January 17th must have suggested to 
Mr. Fish grave doubts as to Mr. Sumner's san- 
ity. It reads like an attempt at clumsy ridicule. 
The Secretary of State had gone to an influential 
Senator in a serious spirit, suggesting a business 
settlement of grave international complications ; 
and he was met by a proposition which at once put 
negotiation out of the question. What could the 
man mean ? Apparently, he could only mean that 
he did not intend to permit any adjustment to be 
effected, if in his power to prevent. Such unques- 
tionably is the impression this paper now conveys. 
Meanwhile, strange as it seems, when received it 
could have occasioned Mr. Fish no special wonder ; 
except, perhaps, in its wide inclusiveness, it sug- 

* Pierce's Sunnier, vol. iv, pp. 480-1. 



102 Before aiid After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

gested nothing" new, nothing altogether beyond the 
pale of reasonable expectation, much less of discus- 
sion. It brouo^ht no novel consideration into de- 
bate. And this statement, surprising now, meas- 
ures the revolution in sentiment as respects de- 
pendencies during the last thirty years. 

"From 1840 to, say, 1870, the almost universal 
belief of thoughtful Enorlishmen was that the colo- 
nies contributed nothing or little to the strength of 
Eno-land. We were bound, it was thoufjht, in 
honor, to protect them ; the mother country should 
see that her children were on the road to become 
fit for independence ; the day for separation would 
inevitably come ; the parting when it took place 
should be on friendly terms; but the separation 
would be beneficial, for both parent and children, 
Even a Conservative minister spoke, or wrote, it is 
said, about our ' wretched colonies.' To-day the 
whole tone of feeling is changed ; her colonies are, 
it is constantly asserted, both the glory and the 
strength of Great Britain. Not the extremest Radi- 
cal ventures to hint a separation." * To similar 
effect another authority, an American, referring to 
the same period, says — " We find England declin- 
ing to accept New Zealand when offered to her 
by English settlers ; treating Australia as a finan- 
cial burden, useful only as a dumping ground for 
criminals ; discussing in Parliament whether India 
be worth defending ; quest<oning the value of 
Hong-Kong, and even refusing to be responsible 
for territories in South Africa." f Even as late as 

^Letter signed " An Observer," dated Oxford, August 22, 1901, 
in New York Nation of September 12, 1901. 

t Poultney Bigelow, The Children of the Nations, p. 332. 



American Civil War and War in tJie Transvaal. 103 

1 88 1, ten years after the negotiation of the Treaty 
of Washington, there can be little doubt that this 
feeline, — the conviction of the little worth of de- 
pendencies, — inspired the policy pursued towards 
the South African republics by the second Glad- 
stone administration, after the disaster of Majuba 
Hill. 

In the mind of Mr Sumner, the ultimate, and, as 
he in 1870 believed, not remote withdrawal of all 
European flags, including, of course, the British, 
from the western hemisphere, was a logical devel- 
opment of the Monroe doctrine. That doctrine, as 
originally set forth, was merely a first enunciation, 
and in its simplest form, of a principle which not 
only admitted of great development but was in the 
direct line of what is known as Manifest Destiny. 
Secretary Seward's Alaska acquisition, bringing to 
an end Russian dominion in America, created a 
precedent. One European flag then disappeared 
from the New World, Those of Spain and Great 
Britain only remained ; and, more than twenty 
years before Richard Cobden had written to Sum- 
ner, " I agree with you that Nature has decided 
that Canada and the United States must become 
one for all purposes of inter-communication. * * * 
If the people of Canada are tolerably unanimous in 
wishing to sever the very slight thread which now 
binds them to this country, I see no reason why, if 
good faith and ordinary temper be observed, it 
should not be done amicably." Charles Sumner 
did not belonof to the Bismarckian school of states- 
manship, — he was no welder in blood and iron ; 
and these words of Cobden furnished the key of 
the situation as it lay in his essentially doctrinaire 



104 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

mind. He, accordingly, looked forward with con- 
fidence to the incorporation of British Columbia 
into the American Union ; but he always insisted 
that it " should be made by peaceful annexation, by 
the voluntary act of England, and with the cordial 
assent of the colonists." Nor, in April, 1869, when 
he delivered his National Claims, or Consequential 
Damages, speech in the Senate, did this result 
seem to him remote. Five months later, still borne 
forward on the crest of a flooding tide, — little pres- 
cient of the immediate future, — he quoted before 
the Massachusetts State Republican convention 
Cobden's words of prophecy, and triumphantly ex- 
claimed — " The end is certain ; nor shall we wait 
long for its mighty fulfilment. In the procession of 
events it is now at hand, and he is blind who does 
not discern it." * 

Read with this clue in mind Mr. Sumner's utter- 
ances between 1869 and 1871, — including his speech 
on the Johnson-Clarendon treaty, his address before 
the Massachusetts Republican convention in the 
following September, and his memorandum to Sec- 
retary Fish of sixteen months later, — become intelli- 
gible, and are consecutive. The claims against Great 
Britain, mounting into the thousands of millions, 
were formulated and advanced by him as no vulgar 
pot-house score, to be itemized, and added up in the 
form of a bill, and so presented for payment. On 
the contrary, they were merely one item in the 
statement of a " massive grievance," become matter 
of gravest international debate. The settlement 
was to be commensurate. Comprehensive, gran- 
diose even, it was to include a hemispheric flag- 

* Works, vol. xiii, p. 129. 



American Civil ]Var and War in the Transvaal. 105 

withdrawal, as well as a revision of the rules of in- 
ternational law. The adjustment of mere money 
claims was a matter of altogether minor considera- 
tion ; indeed, such might well in the end become 
makeweights, — mere pawns in the mighty game. 

It is needless to say that the unexpected was 
sure to occur in the practical unfolding of this pict- 
uresque programme. Indeed, a very forcible sug- 
gestion of the practical danger involved in it, just 
so long as the average man is what he is, was 
brought home to the Senator from Massachusetts 
when he resumed his seat in executive session 
after completing his speech on the Johnson-Claren- 
don treaty, — the carefully prepared opening of the 
great world debate. Mr. Zachary Chandler, of 
Michigan, subsequently took the floor. He was a 
Senator much more closely than Mr. Sumner rep- 
resentative of the average American public man. 
And Mr. Chandler proceeded unconsciously to 
furnish an illustration of the practical outcome of 
Mr. Sumner's scheme as he, the average Ameri- 
can, understood it. He entirely concurred in Mr. 
Sumner's presentation of national injuries, conse- 
quential damages, and a sense of " massive griev- 
ance." " If Great Britain," he then went on to say, 
" should meet us in a friendly spirit, acknowledge 
her wrong, and cede all her interests in the Can- 
adas in settlement of these claims, we will have 
perpetual peace with her ; but, if she does not, we 
must conquer peace. We cannot afford to have an 
enemy's base so near us. It is a national necessity 
that we should have the British possessions. He 
hoped such a negotiation would be opened, and 
that it would be a peaceful one ; but, if it should not 



io6 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

be, and England insists on war, then let the war be 
' short, sharp, and decisive.' " "' The report of 
these utterances was at once transmitted by the 
British minister to his government ; and, taken in 
connection with Mr. Sumner's arraignment and 
his presentation of consequential damages, fur- 
nished those composing that government, as well 
as Professor Goldwin Smith, with much food for 
thought. 

The policy proper to be pursued in the years fol- 
lowing 1869 rapidly assumed shape in Mr. Sum- 
ner's mind. He worked it out in every detail. As, 
shortly after, he wrote to his friend. Dr. S. G. Howe, 
— " I look to annexation at the North. I wish to 
have that whole zone from Newfoundland to Van- 
couver." It was with this result distinctly present 
to him, and as a first step thereto, that he secured 
the English mission for Mr. Motley. Through Mot- 
ley he thought to work. He, chairman of the 
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Re- 
lations, was to mould and shape the future of a 
hemisphere, — President, Secretary of State, and 
Her Majesty's ministers being as clay in his potter 
hands, with Motley for the deftly turning wheel. 
Concerning this project he seems during the sum- 
mer of 1869 to have been in almost daily correspond- 
ence with his friend near the Court of St. James, 
and in frequent conference with Secretary Fish at 
Washington. On June nth, he wrote to the former 
that the Secretary had the day before sounded the 
British minister on the subject of Canada, the Amer- 
ican claims on Great Britain being too large to ad- 
mit of a money settlement. Sir Edward Thornton, 

* See report of debate in New York Tribune, April 27, 1869. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 107 

he went on, had replied that England had no wish 
to keep Canada, but could not part with it without 
the consent of the population. And now the Sec- 
retary wanted Mr. Sumner to state the amount of 
claims ; to which he had replied that he did not re- 
gard it as the proper time for so doing. This let- 
ter, it so chanced, was dated the very day after Mr. 
Motley's first unfortunate interview with the British 
Foreign Secretary ; and that diplomatic jeremiad 
might not inaptly have concluded with a premoni- 
tory hint of what his mentor and guide was on the 
morrow to write. Then, only four days later, — on 
the 15th of June, — Mr. Sumner again advises his 
correspondent of a dinner-table talk with men in 
high official circles, and significantly adds — "All 
think your position is as historic as any described 
by your pen. England must listen, and at last yield. 
I do not despair seeing the debate end — (i) In the 
withdrawal of England from this hemisphere ; (2) 
In remodeling maritime international law. Such a 
consummation would place our republic at the head 
of the civilized world." And, five days afterwards, 
he writes in the same spirit, referring apparently to 
the Secretary of State, — " With more experience at 
Washington, our front would have been more per- 
fect." * The "debate" referred to was, of course, 
that " international debate, the greatest of our his- 
tory, and, before it is finished, in all probability the 
greatest of all history." Thus, in June, 1869, the 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Af- 
fairs was sending what were in effect unofficial in- 
structions to a facile national representative, couched, 
be it noticed, in the very words used by the writer 

* Pierce's Sunnier, vol. iv, pp. 409-12. 



io8 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

eighteen months later in the memorandum just 
quoted. 

In one of these letters it will be observed Mr. 
Sumner told Motley that Secretary Fish had that 
day sounded the British minister as to a possible 
cession of Canada in liquidation of our national 
claims, and appeasement of our sense of " massive 
grievance." * The statement was correct ; and not 
only at this juncture but repeatedly was a compre- 
hensive settlement on this basis urged on the British 
government. Both President and Secretary were 
thus of one mind with Mr. Sumner. In November, 
1869, for instance, four months after Sir John Rose's 
first visit to Washington, and at the very time he 
was writing to Mr. Fish about Mr. Motley's atti- 
tude in London, an entire cabinet meeting was oc- 
cupied in a discussion of the Alabama claims. I'he 
President then suggested the possibility of Great 
Britain quitting Canada ; and he intimated his belief 
that, in such case, we ought to be satisfied with the 
payment for the losses actually sustained through 
the Confederate commerce-destroyers, combined 
with a settlement satisfactory to us of the principles 
of maritime neutrality law. A few days later he ex- 
pressed his unwillingness at that time to adjust the 
claims ; he wished them kept open until Great Brit- 
ain was ready to give up Canada. When certain 
members of the cabinet thereupon assured him that 
Great Britain looked upon Canada as a source of 
weakness, quoting Lord Carlisle and Sir Edward 
Thornton, the President at once replied — " If that 
be so, I would be willino- to settle at once." Durino- 
the following weeks, — December, 1869, and Janu- 

* Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv, p. 409. 



American Civil IVar and JJ^ar in tJic Transvaal. 109 

ary, 1870, — the subject was frequently discussed be- 
tween Secretary Fish and the British minister. The 
former urged on the latter the entire withdrawal of 
Great Britain from Canada, and an immediate set- 
tlement of all claims on that basis. To this Sir Ed- 
ward Thornton replied, — " Oh, you know that we 
cannot do. The Canadians find fault with me for 
saying so openly as I do that we are ready to let 
them go whenever they shall wish ; but they do 
not desire it." In its issue of December i8th, 1869, 
while these conversations, taking place in Wash- 
ington, were duly reported in Downing St., the 
Times, probably inspired, expressed itself as fol- 
lows : — "Suppose the colonists met together, and, 
after deliberating, came to the conclusion that they 
were along way off from the United Kingdom, and 
that every national motive of contiguity, similarity 
of interest, and facility of administration induced 
them to think it more convenient to slip into the 
Union than into the Dominion, — should we oppose 
their determination ? We all know that we should 
not attempt to withstand it, if it were clearly and 
intelligibly pronounced. * * * Instead of the 
Colonies being the dependencies of the Mother 
Country, the Mother Country has become the De- 
pendency of the Colonies. We are tied while they 
are loose. We are subject to a danger while they 
are free." And a few months later, when the Do- 
minion undertook to find fault with some of the 
provisions of the Treaty of Washington, the same 
organ of English opinion thus frankly delivered it- 
self: — " From this day forth look after your own 
business yourselves ; you are big enough, you are 
strong enough, you are intelligent enough, and, if 



I lo Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

there were any deficiency in any of these points, it 
would be siippHed by the education of self-reHance. 
We are both now in a false position, and the time 
has arrived when we should be relieved from it. 
Take up your freedom ; your days of apprentice- 
ship are over." In view of such utterance as these 
from the leading organs of the mother'^country, Mr. 
Sumner certainly had grounds for assuming that a 
not unwilling hemispheric flag-withdrawal by Great 
Britain was more than probable in the early future. 

Returning to what took place in Washington in 
March, 1870, on the eve of the Franco-Prussian 
war, Secretary Fish had another long conversation 
with Sir Edward Thornton which showed forcibly 
how conscious those composing the English minis- 
try were of the falseness of Great Britain's position, 
and of the imminence of danger. The Secretary 
again urged on the Minister that her American 
provinces were to Great Britain a menace of 
danger ; and that a cause of irritation, and of 
possible complication, would, especially in those 
times of Fenianism, be removed, should they be 
made independent. To this Mr. Thornton replied 
— " It is impossible for Great Britain to inaugurate 
a separation. They are willing, and even desirous, 
to have one. Europe may at any moment be con- 
vulsed; and, if England became involved, it would 
be impossible to prevent retaliation, and the ocean 
would swarm with Alabamas. England would then 
be compelled to declare war." The Secretary con- 
soled him by agreeing that commerce-destroyers 
would then be fitted out in spite of all the govern- 
ment might, or could, attempt to prevent them. 

Up to this point the chairman of the Senate 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 1 1 1 

Committee on Foreign Affairs, the President, the 
Secretary of State and the members of the Cabi- 
net generally had gone on in happy concurrence. 
They had the same end in view. But now the 
cleavage between President and Senator rapidly 
widened, A week only after the conversation with 
Sir Edward Thornton last referred to, Gen. Grant 
cautioned Mr. Fish against communicatinof to Mr. 
Sumner any confidential or important information 
received at the State Department. He had now 
ofot to considerinof the Massachusetts Senator un- 
fair and inaccurate ; and from this time the chair- 
man of the Senate Committee on Foreio^n Affairs 
ceased to be a direct factor in the negotiation with 
Great Britain. 

Thus far, in pursuance of the policy dimly out- 
lined in the executive session debate on the John- 
son-Clarendon convention, the two qnestions of a 
settlement of claims and Canadian independence 
had been kept closely associated. They were now 
to be separated. Yet the change was gradual ; for 
Mr, Sumner's policy had a strong hold on the minds 
of both President and Secretary. Even as late as 
September, 1870, only five months before the 
Treaty of Washington was negotiated, Secretary 
Fish and Sir Edward Thornton had another con- 
versation on the subject of Canadian independence. 
It originated in one of the endless squabbles over 
the Fisheries. The Secretary intimated his belief 
that the solution of that question would be found in 
a separation of the Dominion from the Mother 
Country. Thereupon Mr. Thornton repeated what 
he had, he declared, often said before, — that Great 
Britain was willing, and even anxious, to have the 



112 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

Colonies become independent ; but could do noth- 
ing to force independence on them. He then added 
— " It is impossible to connect the question of Can- 
adian independence with the Alabama claims ; not 
even to the extent of providing for the reference of 
the question of independence to a popular vote of 
the people of the Dominion. Independence," he 
added, " means annexation. They are one and the 
same thing." This conversation, it will be ob- 
served, took place on the very day the invest- 
ment of Paris by the victorious German army was 
pronounced complete. In the existing European 
situation everything was possible, anything might 
be anticipated. 

Though his resignation had been requested, Mr. 
Motley still remained in London. His early removal 
was contemplated by'the President, and the ques- 
tion of who should be sent out to replace him was 
under consideration. The place was offered to O. P. 
Morton, then a Senator from Indiana. Wholly the 
President's, the selection was the reverse of happy. 
Governor Morton was inclined to accept ; but he 
desired first to know whether he would, as Min- 
ister, have the Alabama claims settlement entrusted 
to him. The President then talked the matter over 
with Secretary Fish, and what he said showed 
clearly the hold which Sumner's views had on him. 
He proposed that the new Minister should attempt 
a negotiation based on the following concessions by 
Great Britain : (i) the payment of actual losses in- 
curred through the depredations of British Con- 
federate commerce-destroyers ; (2) a satisfactory 
revision of the principles of international law as 
between the two governments; and (3) the sub- 



American Civil IVaj' and War in the Transvaal. 113 

mission to the voters of the Dominion of the ques- 
tion of independence. In commenting immediately 
afterwards on this conversation, Mr. Fish wrote — 
" The President evidently expects these Provinces 
to be annexed to the United States during his ad- 
ministration. I hope that it may be so. That such 
is their eventual destiny, I do not doubt ; but 
whether so soon as the President expects may be a 
question." Owing to the result of an election in 
Indiana held shortly after this time, it was deemed 
inexpedient for Gov. Morton to vacate his seat in 
the Senate. He consequently declined further to 
consider a diplomatic appointment. Though in no 
way germane to the subject of this paper, it is inter- 
esting to know that it was to fill the vacancy thus 
existing that Gen. Butler shortly after brought for- 
ward the name of Wendell Phillips. The President, 
Mr. Fish noted, " very evidently will not consider 
him within the range of possibilities of appointment." 
The pressure for some settlement now brought 
to bear on the British government was day by 
day becoming greater. Late in November the 
Russian minister took occasion to suggest to Sec- 
retary Fish that the present time, — that of the 
Franco-Prussian war, — was most opportune to press 
on Great Britain an immediate settlement of the 
Alabama claims. Two weeks later the message of 
the President was sent to Congress, with the sig- 
nificant paragraph already quoted. In his next 
talk with the British minister. Secretary Fish al- 
luded to the suggestion made to him by the Rus- 
sian minister, and Sir Edward Thornton, in return, 
frankly asked him what the United States wanted. 
And now at last the neg^otiation took a new and 



1 14 Before and After the Treaty of Washington: 

final turn. The Secretary, dropping Canada from 
the discussion, asked merely an expression of regret 
on the partof Great Britain, an acceptable declaration 
of principles of international law, and payment of 
claims. This conversation took place on the 20th of 
November; nineteen days later, on the 9th of Decem- 
ber, at a cabinet meeting held that day, Secretary 
Fish read in confidence a private letter to him from 
Sir John Rose "intimating that the British cabinet is 
disposed to enter on negotiations." It would thus ap- 
pear that the obstacle in the way of a renewed nego- 
tiation had been the purpose of the United States to 
combine in some way a settlement of money claims 
private and national, with a movement looking to 
the withdrawal of the British flag, in whole or part, 
from the North American continent. The moment 
this purpose was withdrawn, the British cabinet 
lost no time in signifying its readiness to negotiate. 
None the less, the whole scheme of Mr. Sumner, 
underlying his famous speech of May 17, 1869, and 
the appointment of Mr. Motley to the English mis- 
sion, was thereby and thenceforth definitely aban- 
doned. In his memorandum, therefore, he de- 
manded nothing new; he merely, stating the case 
in its widest form, insisted upon adherence to a 
familiar policy long before formulated. 

VI 

The narrative now returns to the point when Mr. 
Sumner's memorandum of January 17th reached 
Mr. Fish. Whatever may have been the Secre- 
tary's sensations when he finished the perusal of 
that remarkable paper, one thing must at once have 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 115 

been apparent to him ; by it the situation was sim- 
pHfied. The natural, — indeed the only inference 
to be drawn from the memorandum, — was that the 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Af- 
fairs intended to put an immediate stop to the pro- 
posed negotiation, if in his power so to do. The 
considerations influencing him were obvious. The 
course of procedure now suggested was wholly at 
variance with the policy outlined by him. In June, 
1869, he had written to Mr. Motley: — "I should 
make no claim or demand for the present " ; and to 
Caleb Cushing a month later — " Our case, in length 
and breadth, with all details, should be stated to 
England without any demand of any kind." And 
now, in January, 187 1, he did not regard the con- 
ditions of a successful and satisfactory settlement 
with Great Britain, on the basis he had in view, as 
being any more propitious than in June, 1S69. 
Eighteen months only had elapsed. The fruit was 
not yet ripe ; — then why shake the tree } That 
" international debate, the greatest of our history, 
and before it is finished, in all probability the great- 
est of all history," seemed drawing to a lame and 
impotent, because premature, conclusion. His 
memorandum was, therefore, an attempt at a check- 
mate. By formulating demands which he knew 
would not be entertained, he hoped to bring the 
proposed negotiation to an abrupt close. The 
country would then await some more convenient 
occasion, when. Great Britain being entirely willing, 
a mild compulsion in favor of independence could 
be brought to bear upon her American dependen- 
cies. On the other hand, the issue presented in 
this memorandum was clear and not to be evaded : 



ii6 Before and After the Treaty of Wasliington : 

— Was the Executive to shape the foreign policy of 
the United States ; or was it to receive its inspiration 
from the room of the Senate Committee on Foreiorn 
Relations ? Either that committee must be brought 
into line with the State Department, or the Secre- 
tary of State should accept his position as a chair- 
man's clerk. 

A delicate question between the executive and 
legislative departments of the government, — a 
question as old as the Constitution, was thus in- 
volved. What Constituted an attempt at improper 
interference by one department with the functions 
and organization of the other ? It is obvious that, 
in a representative government under the party sys- 
tem, where both the legislative and the executive 
departments are controlled by the same party or- 
ganization, the legislative committees should be so 
organized as to act in accord with the responsible 
executive. It is a purely practical question. The 
executive cannot, of course, directly interfere in the 
organization of the legislative body ; but it has a 
perfect right to demand of its friends and sup- 
porters in the legislative bodies that those hav- 
inof charofe throuofh committees of the business 
of those bodies should be in virtual harmony with 
the administration. Certainly, they should not be 
in avowed hostility to it. Indeed, under any proper 
construction of functions, those finding themselves 
in virtual opposition should in such cases decline 
committee appointments necessarily placing them 
in a position where they feel under compulsion to 
thwart and hamper the measures of the party of 
which they nominally are members. Such should, 
in parliamentary parlance, take their places below 



Americaji Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 117 

the gangway. In the winter of 1870-1 Mr. Sum- 
ner was in that position. Chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Relations, he was notorious- 
ly in proclaimed opposition on cardinal features of 
foreign policy. Such being the case, in view of the 
executive functions of the Senate, it is at least an 
open question whether he should not have volun- 
tarily declined longer to serve as chairman of the 
committee having foreio^n matters in its charoe. 
His serving was clearly an obstruction to the Ad- 
ministration ; while it would be perfectly possible 
for him to exert his influence in the Senate and 
committee-room without being the official head, 
entrusted as such with the care of measures on 
the defeat of which he was intent. The practice, 
under our government, is the other way. Sen- 
atorial courtesy and seniority, it is well known, 
prevail ; and Secretaries must govern themselves 
accordingly. Nevertheless, in the case of Mr. 
Sumner and his chairmanship in 1 870-1 this prac- 
tice was carried to its extreme limit. Havino- been 
active in opposition to one measure of foreign policy 
by which the President set great store, he declared 
himself in advance opposed to another measure of 
yet greater moment. A wholly impossible prelimi- 
nary condition to the proposed measure must, he 
declared, be insisted upon, — or, to use his own 
language, " cannot be abandoned." 

In January, 1871, the Forty-first Congress was 
fast drawing to its close. Chosen at the election 
which made Grant President for the first time, that 
Congress was overwhelmingly Republican ; so 
much so that, of seventy-two Senators admitted to 
seats, sixty-one were supporters of the Administra- 



Ii8 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

tion. And yet, in a body thus made up, — a body in 
which the opposition numbered but eleven mem- 
bers, — scarcely one in six, — a treaty in behalf of 
the approval of which the President had exerted all 
his influence, personal and official, had failed to se- 
cure even a majority vote. The chairman of the 
Committee on Foreign Relations, regardless of the 
private personal solicitation of the chief Executive 
wholly unprecedented in character, had been not 
only unrelenting but successful in his opposition. 
President Grant was essentially a soldier; as such he 
looked at all things from the military point of view. 
He consequently regarded this action on the part 
of a Senator at the head of the Committee on For- 
eign Relations as, during the War, he would have 
regarded the action of a Department Commander 
who refused to co-operate in the plan of general 
campaign laid down from head-quarters, and ex- 
erted himself to cause an operation to fail. Such 
a subordinate should be summarily relieved. He 
seems actually to have chafed under his inability 
to take this course with the chairman of a Senate 
committee; and so he relieved his feelings at the 
expense of the friend of the chairman, the min- 
ister to England, who was within his power. Him 
he incontinently dismissed ; exactly as, under any 
similar circumstances, he would have dealt with 
some general in subordinate command. 

But Grant, General as well as President, was not 
satisfied with this. His instinct for discipline, as well 
as his feelings, had been outraged, and he was in- 
tent on the real offender, — the Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts. He had also a quick eye for stategic 
situations, and he seems at once to have grasped 



American Civil JJ^ar and War in the Transvaal. 1 19 

the opportunity now offered him : and it hence fol- 
lowed that, when Secretary Fish, with Mr. Sum- 
ner's memorandum in his hand, went to Grant for 
instructions, the President's views as to the inde- 
pendence and annexation of Canada at once under- 
went a change. As he welcomed an issue with his 
much-disliked antagonist upon which he felt assured 
of victory, hemispheric flag-withdrawals ceased to 
interest him. A great possible obstruction in the 
path of the proposed negotiation was thus sudden- 
ly removed. The General-President promptly in- 
structed the Secretary to go to Sir John Rose, and 
advise him that the Administration was prepared 
to accept the proposal for a commission to settle all 
questions between the countries. That was, how- 
ever, a preliminary move only. By it the Adminis- 
tration was committed to action of great import. 
A crucial case was presented ; one on which no 
unnecessary risk would be incurred. The next, and 
really vital step remained to be taken. 

When the first Congress of Grant's earlier ad- 
ministration met in its second session at the usual 
date in December, 1870, an attempt was made fore- 
shadowinof what occurred four months later. A 
partial reorganization of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Affairs was discussed, with a view to the 
introduction into that committee of some element 
less under its chairman's influence, and more docile 
to the Executive. A place on the committee was 
to be found for Roscoe Conklino-, of New York. If 
possible, Mr. Conkling was to be substituted for 
Mr. Sumner ; but if Mr. Sumner was found too 
firmly fixed, Mr. Schurz was to be replaced as a 
member of the committee ; or, as a final resort. 



I20 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

Mr. Patterson, of New Hampshire, if Mr. Schurz 
also proved immovable. The last change was final- 
ly decided upon ; but, when the committee as thus 
altered was reported in caucus, Sumner objected. 
Senatorial courtesy then prevailing, the scheme was 
for the time being abandoned, Charles Sumner was, 
however, yet to learn that, in civil as in military life, 
Ulysses S. Grant was a very persistent man. 

Two weeks later Mr. Sumner did what he had 
hitherto refrained from doing. Up to this time he 
had expressed himself with characteristic freedom, 
denouncing the President in conversation and in 
letter,* but he had not opposed him in debate. He 
now openly broke ground against him in a carefully 
prepared speech on the Dominican question. In 
the position he took he was probably right. He 
would certainly be deemed so in the light of the 
views then generally taken of the world-mission of 
the United States; but that was during the coun- 
try's earlier period, and before the universality of 
its mission was so plainly disclosed as it now is. 
Whether correct, however, in his position or not, 
his manner and language were characteristic, and 
unfortunate. The question on both sides had be- 
come personal ; the feeling uncontrollable : and, 
throughout his career, — early and late, — Mr. Sum- 
ner did not appreciate the significance of words. 
He failed to appreciate them in the speech now 
made, entitled by him " Naboth's Vineyard," where- 
in he accused the President of seeking surrepti- 
tiously to commit the country to a "dance of blood." 
On the 9th of January, less than three weeks after 
this outbreak, the papers relating to the recall of 

* Pierce's Sumner, vol. iv, pp. 448, 454. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 121 

Mr. Motley were, by order of the President, sent 
to the Senate. This was on a Monday ; and it was 
on the following Sunday evening that Mr. Fish 
called on Mr. Sumner by arrangement, with the Sir 
John Rose memorandum. The climax was then at 
hand. Among the papers relating to the removal 
of Mr. Motley was one in which the Secretary had 
referred to some unnamed party as being " bitterly, 
personally and vindictively hostile " to the Presi- 
dent ; while in another passage he had spoken of 
the President as a man than whom none "would 
look with more scorn and contempt upon one who 
uses the words and the assurances of friendship to 
cover a secret and determined purpose of hostility." 

The allusion was unmistakably to Sumner. It 
was so accepted by him. The Motley papers were 
laid before the Senate on the very Monday upon 
which Sir John Rose reached Washington. The 
succeeding Tuesday, the eighth day after the trans- 
mission of those papers, the memorandum of Mr. 
Sumner of January 17th reached the Secretary. 
The break between the two officials was complete; 
they were no longer on speaking terms. 

January was now more than half over, and, in six 
weeks' time, the Forty-first Congress was to pass 
out of existence. When, on the 4th of March, the 
new Congress came into being, the committees of 
the Senate would have to be reappointed, and, of 
necessity, largely remodelled, nineteen newly elected 
members of the body replacing a similar number 
whose terms had expired. Mr. Sumner's deposition 
from the chairmanship he would then have filled 
through five successive Congresses had meanwhile 
become a fixed idea in the presidential mind ; and 



122 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

Secretary Fish shaped his course accordingly. On 
the 24th of January he again met Sir John Rose. 
A week had intervened since the receipt of Mr. 
Sumner's memorandum, and during that week the 
Secretary had been holding consultations with Mr. 
Sumner's committee colleagues ; of course, abso- 
lutely ignoring that gentleman. While so doing he 
had carefully informed himself as to the attitude of 
the Democratic minority in the Senate, now in- 
creased to seventeen in a body numbering in all 
seventy-four. Mr. Bayard and Mr. Thurman were 
the recognized leaders of the opposition ; and, from 
both, he received assurances of support. Upon the 
other side of the chamber, the Administration Sen- 
ators could, of course, be counted upon ; and through 
their leaders, Messrs. Conkling and Edmunds, it 
was well known that they were ripe for revolt 
against the Sumner committee-regime. 

Though personally highly respected, Mr. Sumner 
was not a favorite among his colleagues. In many 
respects a man of engaging personality ; kind, sym- 
pathetic and considerate, essentially refined and 
easy of approach, Mr. Sumner could not brook any 
sustained opposition. Recognizing superiority in no 
one, he was restive in presence of any assertion of 
equality. The savor of incense was sweet in his 
nostrils ; and, while he did not exact deference, habit- 
ual deference was essential to his good-will. Among 
his colleagues, especially those not politically op- 
posed but more or less lacking in sympathy, his 
unconsciously overbearing habit, implacable tem- 
per and intemperate expression necessarily made 
him enemies. The terms seem strong, and yet 
they are not so strong as those used of him at the 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 123 

time by men of his own age, and friends of years' 
standing. One instance will suffice. " Sumner," 
wrote R. H. Dana not long before, " has been act- 
ing like a madman * ''■" * in the positions he 
took, the arguments he advanced, and the language 
he used to the twenty out of twenty-five Republi- 
can Senators who differed from him. If I could 
hear that he was out of his head from opium or 
even New EnQ-land rum, not indicatino^ a habit, I 
should be relieved. Mason, Davis and Slidell were 
never so insolent and overbearing as he was, and 
his arguments, his answers of questions, were boy- 
ish or crazy, I don't know which." Again in June, 
1 86 1, the same excellent authority describes, in the 
familiarity of private correspondence, the Senator as 
coming from Washington " full of denunciation of 
Mr. Seward. * * -f^ He gave me some anxi- 
ety, as I listened to him, lest he was in a heated 
state of brain. He cannot talk five minutes with- 
out bringing In Mr. Seward, and always in bitter 
terms of denunciation. * * ^- His mission is to 
expose and denounce Mr. Seward, and into that 
mission he puts all his usual intellectual and moral 
energy." Two years later Mr. Dana was in Wash- 
ington. In the interim he, an old personal as well 
as political friend, had ventured to question the Sen- 
ator's policy. He now, as was his wont, at once 
called on Mr. Sumner, leaving his card. The call 
was not returned, nor did Mr. Dana hear anything 
from Mr. Sumner during the succeeding twenty days 
while in Washington, or see him, except once when, 
by chance, they encountered each other at a friend's 
house. All this was characteristic of the man. With 
him, difference of opinion savored strongly of moral 



1 24 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

delinquency. To any question in which he was deep- 
ly concerned there was but one side.'^^* As it was his 
mission to denounce Seward in 1861, ten years later 
it was his mission to denounce Grant ; and he ful- 
filled it. As he " gave the cold shoulder " to Dana 
in 1863, so he gave it to Fish in 1871.! Conse- 
quently, in 1 87 1, more than half the body of which 
he was in consecutive service the senior member 
were watching for a chance to humiliate him. 

So, at his next meeting with Sir John Rose on 
the 24th of January, — a meeting which took place 
at the Secretary's house, and not at the State De- 
partment, — Mr. Fish began by quietly, but in con- 
fidence, handing Sir John the Sumner hemispheric 
flag-withdrawal memorandum. Sir John read it; 
and, having done so, returned it, without comment. 
Mr. Fish then informed him that, after full consid- 
eration, the government had determined to enter 
on the proposed negotiation ; and, should Great 
Britain decide to send out special envoys to treat 
on the basis agreed upon, the Administration would 
spare no effort " to secure a favorable result, even 
if it involved a conflict with the chairman of the 
Committee on Foreign Relations in the Sen- 
ate." X 

The die was cast. So far as the chairman of the 
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations was con- 
cerned, the man of Donelson, of Vicksburg and of 
Appomattox now had his eye coldly fixed upon him. 
As to the settlement with Great Britain, it was to be 

* Eulogy of Geo. William Curtis, Boston Memoriat of Charles 
Sumner, p. 148. 

t Pierce, vol. iv, p. 468 ; Adams, R. H. Dana, vol. ii, p. 265. 
X Moore, International Arbitrations, i, 520. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 125 

effected on business principles, and according to 
precedent; " national " claims and hemispheric flag- 
withdrawals were at this point summarily dismissed 
from consideration. 

The purport of the last interview between Mr. 
Fish and Sir John Rose was immediately cabled by 
the latter to London ; and, during the week that 
ensued, the submarine wires were busy. The 
Gladstone ministry, thoroughly educated by fast- 
passing continental events, — France prostrate and 
Germany defiant, — was now, heart and soul, intent on 
extricating Great Britain from the position in which 
it had, ten years before, put itself under a previous 
administration of which Mr. Gladstone had been a 
prominent, as well as an active and an influential, 
member. Before the seven days had expired an 
agreement was reached ; and, on the first of Feb- 
ruary, Sir Edward Thornton notified Secretary Fish 
of the readiness of his government to send a special 
mission to Washington empowered to treat on all 
questions at issue between the two countries. The 
papers were duly submitted to Congress, and, on the 
9th of February, President Grant sent to the Senate 
the names of five persons, designated as commission- 
ers to represent the United States in the proposed 
negotiation. The nominations were promptly con- 
firmed. The question was now a practical one : — 
Would Great Britain humble its pride so far as to 
avail itself of the chance of extrication thus opened ? 
— and, if it did humble its pride to that extent, could 
the administration of President Grant so shape the 
negotiation as to get the United States out of the 
position in which Mr. Sumner had partially suc- 
ceeded in putting it ? His more than possible op- 



126 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

position to any settlement at that time had to be 
reckoned with ; if necessary, overborne. 

For present purposes, it is needless to enter into 
the details of the negotiation which ensued. If 
not familiar history, I certainly have no new light 
to throw on it. Under the skilful business enidance 
of Mr. Fish, the settlement moved quietly and rap- 
idly to its foreordained conclusion. It is, however, 
still curious to study, between the lines of the record, 
the extent to which the Sumner memorandum influ- 
enced results, and how it in the end only just failed to 
accomplish its author's purpose. It rested among Mr. 
Fish's private papers, a bit of diplomatic dynamite 
the existence of which was known to few, and men- 
tioned by no one. Not a single allusion is to be 
found to it in the debates, the controversies or the 
correspondence of the time. Yet there can be little 
doubt that its presence contributed sensibly to that 
strong presentation of national injuries, indirect 
claims, and consequential damages which, in the 
following autumn, startled Great Britain from its 
propriety, and brought the treaty to the verge of 
rejection. Had it led to that result, the possible 
consequences might now, did space permit, be in- 
teresting to consider; but such a result, whether an 
advantage or otherwise to the world-at-large, would 
have been a singular tribute to the influence of 
Charles Sumner. In all human probability, also, a 
calamity to Great Britain. 

But to return to the narrative. Gen. Grant was 
now handling a campaign. He did it in character- 
istic fashion. His opponent and his objective were 
to him clear, and he shaped his plan of operations 
accordingly. So rapidly did events move, so ready 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 127 

ripe for action were all concerned, that the Joint 
High Commission, as it was called, organized in 
Washington on the 27th of February, exactly seven 
weeks from the arrival there of Sir John Rose. 
On the 8th of the following May the treaty was 
signed; and, on the loth, the President sent it to 
the Senate. It was at once referred to the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations. Mr. Sumner was, 
however, no longer chairman of that committee. On 
the 8th of March,— two months before,— the nego- 
tiators were struggling with the vexed question of in- 
direct claims, Mr. Sumner's special senatorial thun- 
der; and, on the day following, at a Senate Republi- 
can caucus then held, he was deposed. As the story 
has been told in all possible detail, it is needless here 
to describe what then occurred. The step taken was 
one almost without precedent, and there is every 
reason to conclude that it had been decided upon 
in the private councils of the White House quite ir- 
respective of the fate of any possible treaty which 
might result from the negotiations then in progress. 
However that may be, its complete justification can 
be found in facts now known in connection with 
that negotiation. Upon certain points there is no 
longer room for controversy. As already pointed 
out, in the conduct of the foreign policy of the coun- 
try, the chairman of the Senate Committee on For- 
eign Relations was, and is, of necessity a part of 
the Administration. In March, 1870, a settlement 
with Great Britain had become a cardinal feature, 
—it might be said the cardinal feature, in the for- 
eign policy of the Administration, as represented by 
its official organ, the State Department. With the 
head of that Department the chairman of the Sen- 



128 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiington : 

ate Committee on Foreign Affairs was no longer 
upon speaking terms ; while, in private, his denun- 
ciation of him and of the President was loud and 
limitless. That chairman had, moreover, been 
consulted as to the negotiation before it was in- 
itiated, and, in reply, had signified his opinion 
that " the withdrawal of the British flag from this 
hemisphere, including provinces and islands, cannot 
be abandoned as a condition, or preliminary of set- 
tlement." With the Senate fate of the Johnson- 
Clarendon convention fresh in memory, this mem- 
orandum of the chairman of the committee Mr. 
Fish had privately communicated to the confiden- 
tial agent of the British government. So doing 
was on his part right and proper. After its expe- 
rience over the Johnson-Clarendon convention, that 
government of right ought to be, — indeed, had to 
be, — advised of this danger before being invited to 
enter upon a negotiation which might result in 
another mortifying rebuff. In making this unoffi- 
cial communication the Secretary had intimated to 
the agent that, should Great Britain still decide to 
proceed with the negotiations, the Administration 
would spare no effort to secure a favorable result 
"even if it involved a conflict" with Mr. Sumner. 
To any one who knew the President and his 
methods, mental and military, this admitted of no 
misinterpretation. Unquestionably, the contents of 
Mr. Sumner's memorandum were well kno»vn to 
every one of the British plenipotentiaries, as also 
was the committal of the Administration in connec- 
tion therewith. Under these circumstances the 
course now pursued was more than justifiable ; it 
was necessary, as well as right. For the Adminis- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 129 

tration, in face of the notice thus given, to have per- 
mitted the continuance of Mr, Sumner in his chair- 
manship, if to prevent was in its power, would have 
been worse than childish ; it would have distinctly 
savored of bad faith: and neither Gen. Grant nor Mr. 
Fish were ever chargeable with bad faith, any more 
than the record of the former was indicative of a prone- 
ness to indecisive or childish courses of procedure. 
On the 9th of March, therefore, in accordance 
with the understood wishes of the Executive, Mr. 
Sumner was deposed by his senatorial colleagues 
from the chairmanship of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations. Still, when, on the 24th of 
May the treaty was reported back to the Senate by 
the committee as now organized, with a favorable 
recommendation, the question of interest was as to 
the course Mr. Sumner would pursue. Would he 
acquiesce ? It was well understood that on all 
matters of foreign policy the Senate, if only from 
long habit, gave a more than attentive ear to his 
utterances. Almost daily, after the treaty was trans- 
mitted to the Senate and until it was reported back 
from committee, intimations from this person and 
from that, — callers on Mr. Sumner or guests at his 
table, — reached the Department of State, indicating 
what the deposed chairman proposed to do, or not 
to do. One day Judge Hoar, now serving as one of 
the Joint High Commissioners, would announce that 
Mr. Sum-iier had declared himself the evening be- 
fore in favor of the treaty, and was preparing a 
speech accordingly ; on the evening of the same 
day another gentleman came directly to Mr. Fish 
from Mr. Sumner's table to say that his host 
had just been criticising the treaty, and proposed 



1 30 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

to urge amendments to it. The British commis- 
sioners were especially solicitous. They even went 
so far as to ignore their instructions to leave Wash- 
ington as soon as possible after the treaty was 
signed. The Administration wished them to re- 
main there, as one of the Englishmen wrote, on the 
ground that they might be able to influence "par- 
ticular Senators, such as the Democrats and (still 
more) Sumner, over whom [the Administration has] 
no party control." Sir Stafford Northcote then 
goes on to say of Mr. Sumner — " We have paid 
him a great deal of attention since he has been de- 
posed, and I think he is much pleased at being still 
recognized as a power." Sir Staflbrd might well 
say that they had paid him a great deal of atten- 
tion. Mr. Sumner's egotism and love of flattery 
were tolerably well understood ; and the English- 
'men, realizing that he was "very anxious to stand 
well with England," humored him to the top of his 
bent. Lord de Grey, for instance, presently to be 
made Marquis of Ripon, the head of the British side 
of the commission, went out of his way to inform the 
deposed chairman that, without his speech on the 
Johnson-Clarendon convention, " the treaty could 
not have been made, and that he [Lord de Grey] 
worked by it as a chart." Nor were the American 
commissioners less solicitous ; though they went 
about it in a more quiet way. For, hardly was the 
ink of the signatures to the treaty dry before Judge 
Hoar called at Mr. Sumner's door with a copy, 
which he commended to the Senator's favorable 
consideration " as meeting on all substantial points 
the objections he had so well urged against the 
Johnson-Clarendon convention." 



American Civil War' and War in the Transvaal. 131 

That Mr. Sumner, had he, on consideration, con- 
cluded that it was his duty to oppose the confirma- 
tion of the treaty, could, placed as he now was, have 
secured its rejection, is not probable. As chairman 
of the Committee on Foreign Relations it would al- 
most unquestionably have been in his power so to 
do ; not directly, perhaps, but through the adoption of 
plausible amendments. This course Mr. Fish ap- 
prehended. On the 1 8th of May, Mr. Trumbull, 
then Senator from Illinois, and deservedly influen- 
tial, called at the Department to inquire whether an 
amendment would jeopardize the treaty. In reply 
he was assured that any amendment, however 
trivial, would, in all probability, destroy the treaty, 
as it would enable Great Britain either to withdraw 
entirely, or, in any event, to propose counter 
amendments. In point of fact, Mr. Samner, while 
advocating approval, did offer amendments ; but, 
no longer chairman of the committee, he was shorn 
of his strength. Up to the time of voting, he was 
enigmatical. He would intimate a sense of great 
responsibility, inasmuch as he realized the extent to 
which the country was looking to him for guidance ; 
and he would then suofS'est doubts. His mind was 
not clear, &c., &c. On the direct issue of approval 
the solid phalanx of Administration Senators would 
unquestionably have been arrayed against him ; 
and, on the Democratic side of the chamber, he 
was far from popular. None the less it would have 
been in his power, playing on the strong Irish ele- 
ment and the anti-English feeling then very rife, to 
have made much trouble. The treaty bears dis- 
tinct marks of having been framed with all this in 
view. In its provisions, not only did he find the 



132 Before and After the Treaty of WasJiiiigton : 

ground in great degree cut away from under him, 
but he could not help realizing that, in view of his 
speech on the Johnson-Clarendon convention, he 
stood to a certain extent committed. It was not open 
for him to take the hemispheric flag-withdrawal at- 
titude. So doing was impossible. He had not taken 
it before ; and, though his reasons for not taking it 
were obvious, to take it now would, under the cir- 
cumstances, inevitably expose him to ridicule. He 
was in thus far fairly and plainly circumvented. 

But, more and most of all Charles Sumner was, 
be it ever said, no demagogue. Somewhat of a doc- 
trinaire and more of an agitator, he was still in his 
way an enlightened statesman, with aspirations for 
America and mankind not less generous than per- 
fervid. His egoism was apparent ; nor has his 
rhetoric stood the test of time. A hearty hater, 
and unsparing of denunciation, he hated and de- 
nounced on public grounds only ; but his standards 
were invariably high, and he was ever actuated by 
a strong sense of oblio^ation. His course now was 
creditable. In his belief an unsurpassed opportu- 
nity had been lost. A rejection of the proposed ad- 
justment, manifestly fair so far as it went, could, 
however, result only in keeping alive a source of 
acute irritation between two great nations. That 
involved a heavy responsibility ; a responsibility 
not in Mr. Sumner's nature to assume. Accord- 
ingly, he accepted the inevitable ; and he accepted 
it not ungracefully. Gen. Grant numbered him, 
with Buckner, Pemberton, Johnston, Bragg and Lee 
among his vanquished opponents. As to Mr. Fish, 
the two were never afterwards reconciled ; but the 
Secretary now had his way. 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 133 

Into the subsequent difficulties encountered by- 
Secretary Fish in his work of saving- Great Britain 
in spite of Great Britain's self, it is needless to en- 
ter. Suffice it to say they can all be traced back to 
the positions assumed by Mr, Sumner in April, 
1869. As already pointed out, it was obviously 
from an over-desire to forestall Mr. Sumner that 
Secretary Fish's assistant, Mr. Bancroft Davis, a 
little later jeopardized the whole treaty by the ex- 
treme grounds taken on the subject of national 
injuries, indirect claims and consequential dam- 
ages, and the somewhat intemperate way in which 
the same were urged. With Mr. Sumner's historic 
indictment of the Johnson-Clarendon convention 
fresh in memory, the full record of grievance had to 
be set forth, or the American people might resent a 
tacit abandonment of what they had been taught to 
regard as their just demands. With an eye to this 
possibility, — Sumner always in mind, — Mr. Fish had 
at an early stage of the negotiations significantly inti- 
mated to his colleagues that "he supposed it was 
pretty well agreed that there were some claims which 
would not be allowed by the arbitrators, but he 
thought it best to have them passed upon." * So, in 
avoiding the senatorial Sylla, Mr. Bancroft Davis 
subsequently brought the ark of settlement squarely 
up against the British Charybdis. Six years later, 
when both Mr. Sumner and Mr. Motley were dead.f 
General Grant made contemptuous reference to the 
"indirect damage humbug," as he then phrased it ; 
and, as set forth in the American " case " presented at 

* Davis, Mr. Fish and the Treaty of IVashins^toti, p. 77. 
t In an interview at Edinburgh, published in the New York //d-r- 
«/^/ of September 25, 1877. 



134 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

Geneva, it was a " humbug," — a by no means cred- 
itable " humbug." As such it had by some means 
to be got rid of; and at Geneva it was, with general 
acceptance, so got rid of. Be it always, however, 
remembered, the vulgarized bill then presented was 
not the sublimated balance-sheet Charles Sumner 
had in mind. His was no debit-and-credit account, 
reduced to dollars and cents, and so entered in an 
itemized judgment ; nor was this better understood 
by any one than by President Grant. It is but fair 
to assume that, in the rapid passage of events be- 
tween 1870 and 1877, the facts now disclosed had 
been by him forgotten. 

In Wemyss Reid's Life of William E. Forster 
is a chapter devoted to this subject. I think it may 
not unfairly be said that Mr. Forster now saved the 
treaty. In the first outburst of indignation over the 
resurrection in the American "case" of Sumner's self- 
evolved equities and incalculable claims, a special 
meeting of the British cabinet was summoned, at 
which a portion of the members were for withdrawing 
forthwith from the arbitration. Though he himself, 
unadvisedas to the real motive for so emphasizingthe 
demand on account of national injuries, held the whole 
thing to be a case of " sharp practice," yet Mr. Fors- 
ter counselled a moderate and prudent course, — as 
he put it, " a cool head and a cool temper needed " ; 
adding, " I never felt any matter so serious." He 
then drew up a special memorandum for the use of 
his colleagues, looking to such action as would be 
most likely to leave open the way to an understand- 
ing. Upon this all the ministers, save four, were 
against him. Mr. Forster next met Mr. Adams, 
then passing through London on his way home 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 135 

from the preliminary meeting of the tribunal of ar- 
bitration at Geneva, he being a member of it ; and 
Mr. Adams fairly told him that, for Great Britain, it 
was a case of now or never. If, Mr. Adams said, 
Great Britain insisted on the absolute exclusion of 
the indirect claims, America must withdraw ; and, 
if it did, "the arbitration was at an end, and Amer- 
ica would never make another treaty." 

During those anxious weeks the British cabinet 
was the scene of more than one heated discussion, 
and so severe was the tension that the very exist- 
ence of the Ministry was threatened. On the 
afternoon of April 24th, Forster intimated to Gen- 
eral Schenck, the American Minister, that, unless 
something was done, he and the Marquis of Ripon 
"could not keep the treaty alive." Mr. Adams 
was now once more in London on his way to Ge- 
neva, and Mr. Forster again saw him, receiving the 
assurance that " Fish and the President hact the 
Senate well in hand " ; yet, this notwithstanding, 
when an article supplemental to the treaty, obviat- 
ing the cause of trouble, was agreed on and sub- 
mitted to the Senate, that body so amended it before 
ratification that the English government professed 
itself unable to concur. It seemed as if the last 
chance of a pacific settlement was about to vanish. 

On the 15th of June the Court of Arbitration met 
at Geneva, pursuant to adjournment. Everythino- 
was in the air. At Geneva, however, the policy of 
the State Department was understood; and, en- 
trusted to experienced hands, it was, at the proper 
time, skilfully forwarded. A way out of the last, 
and most serious of all the dangers which imperilled 
the settlement was thus devised, and the arbitration 



136 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

moved on thenceforth upon common-sense business 
Hues to a practical resuh. 

Times chang-e, and with them the estimate in 
which nations hold issues. Recollecting the levity, 
at times marked by more than a trace of sarcasm and 
petulance, with which the British Foreign Secretary 
had received our earliest reclamations because of 
injuries inflicted on our mercantile marine by British- 
built commerce-destroyers, I cannot refrain, before 
closing, from a few words descriptive of the very 
different mood in which the Ministry then in power 
awaited tidings of the final results reached at Gen- 
eva. It was the 15th of June, 1872. The treaty 
was in question. The Court of Arbitration met at 
Geneva at noon ; in London, at the same hour, a 
meeting of the cabinet was in session, — a meeting 
almost unique in character. The members waited 
anxiously for tidings. For two hours they attended 
listlessly to routine Parliamentary work ; and then 
took a recess. When, at 3 o'clock, the time for re- 
assembling came, no advices had been received. 
Thereupon, a further adjournment was taken until 
5:30. Still no telegram. All subjects of conversa- 
tion being now exhausted, the members sat about, 
or faced each other in silence. It was a curious situa- 
tion for a ministry. Had England humiliated herself 
by an expression of fruitless regret ? Those present 
contemplated the situation in the true Parliamentary 
spirit. " The opposition would snigger if they saw 
us," remarked one ; and the speaker soon after sent 
for a chess-board, and he and Mr. Forster took 
chairs out on the terrace in front of the cabinet- 
room, and there sat down to a game, using one _ of 



American Civil War and War i)i the Transvaal. 137 

the chairs as a table. Three games were played; 
but still no tidincrs. So the company dispersed for 
dinner. As the Tribunal adjourned over until Mon- 
day, no tidings came that night; the method of 
procedure had, however, been arranged, and Mr. 
Fish communicated with. His assent to what was 
proposed came immediately ; and meanwhile Mr. 
Forster was bestirrino- himself in London to " uro-e 
help to Adams," and a " short, helpful telegram " 
was forwarded. "After all," wrote Mr. Forster 
that night, " this treaty, which has as many lives as 
a cat, will live." The next afternoon this staunch 
friend of America and of peace scribbled, from his 
seat in the ministerial benches, this note to his wife : 
— " Hip, hip, hip, hooray ! the final settlement of 
the indirect claims came during questions to-day, 
and Gladstone announced it amid great cheers on 
our side and the disorust of the Tories. This is a 
good year now, whatever happens." It was the 
19th of June, 1872, — one month over eleven years 
since the issuance of the famous proclamation. A 
heavy shadow was lifted from off the future of the 
British Empire. That it was thus lifted must in all 
historical truth be ascribed to Hamilton Fish. 

In discussing the developments of history, it is 
almost never worth while to waste time and inge- 
nuity in philosophizing over what might have been. 
The course of past events was — as it was ! What 
the course of subsequent events would, or might 
have been, had things at some crucial juncture gone 
otherwise than as they actually did go, no one can 
more than guess. Historical consequences are not 
less strange than remote. For instance, the lessons 



138 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

of our own War of Independence, closed six score 
years ago, are to-day manifestly influencing the at- 
titude and action of Great Britain throuehout her 
system of dependencies. Should the system ever, 
as now proposed, assume a true federated form, 
that result, it may safely be asserted, will be largely 
due to the experience gained a century and a 
quarter ago on the North American continent, sup- 
plemented by that now being gained in South 
Africa. In view of the enormous strides made by 
science during the last third of a century it cannot 
be assumed that, as respects warfare on land or on 
sea, what was possible in 1863 would be possible 
now. The entire globe was not then interlaced 
with electric wires, and it may well be that another 
Alabama is as much out of the range of future 
probabilities as a ship flying the black flag, with 
its skull and crossed bones, was outside of those of 
1 85 1. This, however, aside, it is instructive, as 
well as interestino- to summarize the record which 
has now been recalled, and to consider the position 
in which Great Britain would to-day find itself but 
for the settlement effected and principles established 
by means of the Treaty of Washington. 

So far as the international situation is concerned, 
the analogy is perfect. Every rule of guidance 
applicable in our Civil war of 1861-65 is a fortiori 
applicable in the South African war of 1899- 1902., 
The contention of Great Britain from 1861 to 1865 
was that every neutral nation is the final judge of 
its own international obligations ; and that, in her 
own case, no liability, moral or material, because of 
a violation of those obligations was incurred, no 
matter how scandalous the evasion might subse- 



American Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 139 

quently prove to have been, unless the legal advisers 
of the government pronounced the ascertainable evi- 
dence of an intention to violate the law sufficient to 
sustain a criminal indictment. In view of the " lu- 
crative " character of British ship-building-, it was 
farther maintained that any closer supervision of 
that industry, and the exercise of " due diligence" 
in restraint of the construction of commerce-de- 
stroyers, would impose on neutrals a "most bur- 
densome, and, indeed, most dangerous " liability. 
Finally, under the official construction of British 
municipal law, — a law pronounced by Her Majesty's 
government adequate to any emergency, — " it was 
unnecessary for a naval belligerent to have either a 
port or a sea-shore." The South African republics, 
for instance, "might unite together, and become a 
great naval power," using the ports of the United 
States as a base for their maritime operations. 
" Money only was required for the purpose." Then 
came the admission of Sir Edward Thornton that, 
in case Great Britain were engaged in war, retalia- 
tions in kind for the Alabama and the Florida 
would naturally be in order ; commerce-destroyers 
would be fitted out on the Pacific coast as well as 
the Atlantic, in spite of all the United States gov- 
ernment might, or could, do to prevent them ; and, 
with them, the high seas would swarm. War must 
follow; and then Canada was "a source of weak- 
ness." On land and on sea Great Britain was 
equally vulnerable. 

From such a slough of despond was Great Brit- 
ain extricated by the Treaty of Washington. That 
much is plain ; all else is conjecture. But it is still 
curious to consider what might well have now re- 



140 Before and After the Treaty of Washington : 

suited had the United States, between 1S69 and 
1 87 1 definitely for its guidance adopted the policy 
contemplated by Charles Sumner instead of that 
devised by Hamilton Fish, and had then persist- 
ently adhered to it. In the hands and under the 
direction of Mr. Sumner, the method he proposed 
to pursue to the end he had in mind might have 
proved both effective and, in the close, beneficent. 
So long as all things are possible — Who can say ? 
But Mr. Sumner died in 1874; and with him must 
have died the policy he purposed to inaugurate. 
Characteristically visionary, he was wrong in his 
estimate of conditions. He in no wise foresaw that 
backward swing of opinion's pendulum, from the 
" wretched colonies " estimate of 1 870 to the Iviperi- 
um et Libertas conceptions of 1 900. Mr. Fish, on the 
other hand, less imaginative, was more nearly right. 
He effected a practical setdement; and, in so doing, 
he accomplished a large result. For to-day it is ap- 
parent to all who carefully observe that, as the direct 
outcome of the American Civil War, the world made 
a long stride in advance. It is a great mistake to 
speak of the Florida, the Alaba??ia and the Shenan- 
doah as " privateers." They were not. No " pri- 
vateer," in the proper acceptation of the word, ever 
sailed the ocean under the Confederate flag ; the 
commerce-destroyers of that conflict, whether fitted 
out on the Mersey and Clyde, or in home ports, 
were, one and all, government ships-of-war, owned 
and regularly commissioned by the belligerent 
whose flag they flew, and commanded by its offi- 
cers. Their single mission was, none the less, to 
burn, sink and destroy private property on the high 
seas. They were engaged in no legitimate, — no 



Anicricaii Civil War and War in the Transvaal. 141 

recognized operation of modern warfare ; unless it 
be legitimate for an invading army wholly to devas- 
tate a hostile country, leaving behind it a smoking 
desert only. On the ocean, the archaic principle still 
obtains that the immunity of private property from 
capture or destruction is confined to times of peace; 
and, when war intervenes, mankind reverts to pi- 
racy, as the natural condition of maritime life. So 
the commerce-destroyers were not pirates, — com- 
mon enemies of mankind ; but, as a result of the 
Treaty of Washington, a new and broad principle 
will inevitably, in some now not remote hereafter, 
replace this relic of barbarism, — the principle that 
private ["property, not contraband of war, is as 
much entitled to immunity from destruction or 
capture on water as on land. It is, accordingly, 
not unsafe even now to predict that the Florida, 
the Alabama and the Shenandoah will eo down in 
history, not as pirates, but as the last lineal sur- 
vivors of the black-flagged banditti of the olden 
time. If this so prove, it will then be apparent that 
the Treaty of Washington supplemented the Proc- 
lamation of Emancipation, rounding out and com- 
pleting the work of our Civil War. The verdict of 
history on that great conflict must then be that the 
blood and treasure so freely poured out by us be- 
tween Sumter and Appomattox were not expended 
in vain ; for, through it, and because of it, the last 
vestiges of piracy vanished from the ocean, as slav- 
ery had before disappeared from the land. 



re 



•04 



:£B 1 1902 



